The Iron Assassin

by Ed Greenwood

  The emptied and lightened mail ship rose a little and flew faster. She saw the Iron Assassin lurch to the helm and turn its nose into the sky.

  It climbed swiftly, heading for … a distant, circling airship: a large freighter in the sky downriver, the other side of the Tower of London.

  And from behind Rose’s shoulder a great but graceful bulk swooped into view. The Lady Roodcannon’s airship; she could see its distinctive bowsprit of mermaids. It raced after the mail ship, and its guns spat once, twice … and then fell silent, for the Windolphin was in line with the ship it was now rushing to meet, the freighter circling in the distance.

  Men on the decks of the freighter, little larger than ants at this distance, were firing pistols at the speeding mail ship. Lady Roodcannon’s huge airship was suddenly banking sharply to the left and climbing into the sky, seeming in desperate haste …

  Leaving only two ships in Rose’s view. Right in front of her, clear in the brightening morning sky.

  She watched in the serene silence as the Iron Assassin flew the mail ship right into the freighter, turning it on edge at the last moment so that it seemed a gigantic arrowhead, streaking into the side of the larger—

  The sky erupted into a huge ball of flame, hurling debris in all directions. The sound smote her ears like a hammer as the air slapped her across the face and flung her balloons across the sky.

  The flames where the two ships had been spat out many smaller fireballs that arced in all directions, trailing smoke, like so many tentacles …

  And Lady Rose Harminster found herself weeping.

  * * *

  Cold, hard stone bumped his elbow, leaving it burning. Then it bumped his hip, no more gently.

  Then he slipped, or fell, and rope sawed at his shoulder … and Jack Straker, Lord Tempest, finally came awake.

  His jaw ached like sin, and his chest and shoulders didn’t feel much better. Exoskeletons were effective things, indeed.

  He was …

  He was dangling down the side of a curving wall of stone, huge old well-fitted blocks that fell away below him and continued a little way above him … a fortress tower.

  He peered rather blearily around. Yonder was the White Tower, and this …

  He looked, counted towers, and decided he was hanging from the top of the Lanthorn Tower. The collapsing balloons he was tied to were draped down its side, caught on something above him.

  Gunfire promptly barked from windows just above him, punching out through the balloons into the dawn air. Which meant that the moment someone took a knife to the fabric, or opened a window below and aimed a pistol upwards with precision, the Empire was going to be one meddlesome tinkerer noble fewer.

  Unless, of course, he did something about his present predicament. Somehow it always came down to Jack bloody Straker doing something.

  He clawed his way up the balloon fabric, and when a gun barrel thrust out of a window, he grabbed it and pulled, hard.

  A startled beagle came half out of the window, shouting, and Tempest punched him in the throat, good and hard. The man’s shouts became strangling sobs, and then Tempest slid down the man’s back and into the room.

  There was another beagle in it, crouched over and reloading. “Keep your hair on, Anson,” this worthy snarled, not looking up—which gave Tempest time to fish out one of the trusty small bags he’d brought from Foxden and club the man across the head and neck with it.

  The man sagged, and Tempest gratefully relieved him of his knife, cut himself free of the mail harness, and got to the door just in time.

  Half the heavy-booted members of the Constabulary in London seemed to be hurrying up the tower stairs. The foremost pair had pistols in their hands and anger on their faces and were raising their weapons to aim at him.

  Loyal guards of the Queen, or traitors among the beagles? Well, the Order spread its Tentacles everywhere … and what were armed beagles doing here at the Tower anyway?

  Tempest used the knife to slice the drawstring of his bag and poured its contents—oiled ball bearings of various sizes, the latest toys of advancing steam-driven technology—down the stone stairs.

  The slick little metal spheres bounced and rolled underfoot, sending the beagles back down the stairs in helpless falls. The foremost man struggled for balance, pistol firing wildly into the ceiling—and Tempest sprang, grabbing the man by the throat and sending him over backward.

  The man bounced with brutal force, the gun flying one way and his helmet the other, and Tempest clung to the unconscious result, riding that unfortunate beagle down the steps as a human toboggan.

  Very like those he’d used as a boy on snowy slopes in the Dales—though none of those descents had been down interior stone stairs or involved crashing into fallen men and plunging over them and on, or bone-shattering meetings of a ridden man’s limbs with walls while descending to lower levels.

  Tempest’s wild ride didn’t end until they slid right out of an open door at ground level and out into the inner ward.

  Where doors were banging open and orders were being shouted. Lying still atop his beagle, a little dazed—though he suspected the beagle was a long way beyond being dazed, perhaps forever past such things—Tempest listened to the familiar voice of Alston Drake bellowing orders that amounted to rearranging his men to assault the White Tower.

  “Now that the planned grand crash of the fireship won’t be happening, lads, we’ll just have to do this the hard way!”

  So Drake was part of it, and all of these beagles, too. That made Tempest feel a bit better about what he’d just done to a dozen of them on the tower stairs.

  “Gregson, take your command around the—”

  My, but Drake was in fine vocal form this morning!

  The bellowing ended abruptly as three of the beagles standing beside Drake were smashed flat to the ground under the boots and elbows of an unconscious and unlooked-for Bleys Hardcastle, descending rapidly onto them out of the sky, trailing one balloon and the shrunken remnants of four more failed ones.

  “Aerial assault!” Drake boomed, snatching out a pistol and looking up.

  The first thing he saw was the Lady Rose Harminster drifting down in her balloon-escorted mail sack.

  Drake gaped up at her for a moment, and Tempest, scrambling to his feet, saw the man’s face change as he recognized her.

  And then Drake’s features hardened, and he raised his pistol to fire.

  Tempest sprinted for him, second small bag in hand. Drake was taking careful aim at the descending noblewoman, but he heard or sensed Tempest behind him at the last moment and whirled around—so he got the bag of ball bearings right in his face.

  Blood and teeth flew, and Tempest felt the man’s jaw or nose break, or both, as he fell past.

  Drake staggered, and Tempest rolled, came to his feet, turned—and pounced on the man from behind, slipping and falling but dragging Drake with him to the ground.

  He was trying to get the gun out of Drake’s hand before the man recovered enough to use it, but guns were firing all around, and it was Drake’s body that stopped a flurry of bullets from his own men meant for Tempest.

  Then fresh gunfire erupted from another direction, and Drake’s men were falling.

  Rose struggled to free herself as she came down to the ground, and Tempest furiously rolled Drake’s dying weight off himself to try to get to her—and they both had a splendid view of the Prince Royal’s men bursting out of the White Tower and shooting down Drake’s men.

  “Tempest!” someone roared from among them. “Keep back! The White Tower is crammed full of munitions and wired to explode!”

  “Where’s the Queen?” Tempest shouted back.

  “The Prince has taken her down into the undercroft and the tunnels, for safety! This isn’t done yet—there are traitors all over the towers and grounds!”

  As if to prove those words, firing erupted from various windows and battlements, and Tempest hastened to throw himself atop the Lady Rose.


  “Get off me, you ox!” she promptly hissed. “Hardcastle’s yonder, and—”

  The firing rose into a furious volley, then died away again just as quickly as everyone reached the need to reload.

  Time that Rose and Tempest used to drag their friend Hardcastle back into the Lanthorn Tower.

  Someone promptly fired at them out of the darkness—and Tempest cursed and clutched his shoulder, falling hard on that elbow on the steps.

  The Lady Harminster snatched up a fallen pistol and fired wildly at where the shot had come from, awkwardly and two-handed, and was rewarded with a groan.

  Which told her whoever it was still lived, so she ran to where she could see another pistol, scooped it up, and emptied it after the first.

  Finding a third gun, Rose rushed fiercely into the tower, but found only dead and dying men, so she turned back to Tempest.

  “Jack? Jack!”

  “I’ll live,” he groaned. “See how Bleys is, will you?”

  “I was sleeping peacefully,” Hardcastle mumbled, “but someone started a war, and all the firing shook me awake. God, my head hurts. The head on the left, more than the head on the right. What happened?”

  Rose looked at Tempest, and Tempest looked back at her, and they both grew wry grins.

  “Oh, nothing much,” Jack told his friend.

  “A lot,” the Lady Harminster corrected firmly, “but I’ll tell you later. When fewer people are trying to kill us.”

  * * *

  “I see it’s all gone wrong,” Lady Roodcannon observed sharply, setting down her third glass of wine and reaching for the lever that worked the elevation vanes. “Must I do everything myself?”

  She put The Steel Kiss into a dive, rang the bells that would send her crew scrambling to reload, aimed at the White Tower, and started firing.

  As her great ship swept down, she kept her fingers firmly on the firing studs. Everyone down there was a target, every single running figure within the wards. She’d sacrifice any number of Order members to get the Prince Royal and to make the explosives in the Tower blow up and eliminate the Queen.

  “Die!” she snarled. “Die! Die, damn you—die!”

  She was still diving and firing when the world right in front of her burst into a wall of thunderous flame.

  And The Steel Kiss plunged right into it.

  * * *

  “I prefer to be known as ‘Uncle.’”

  Venetta Deleon’s answering smile held only the slightest trace of mockery. “Very well, Uncle. I—”

  The door behind her opened, bringing a frown to Uncle’s face. He had given orders they were not to be disturbed, and—

  The frown deepened when he saw who came through it. A man who should not be here: Grimstone, Lady Roodcannon’s man.

  “Forgive me,” he said gravely, “but there are things you, sir, should know without any delay. Whipsnade and all of his men are imperiled by Lady Roodcannon and her airship, a battle is raging at the Tower of London, and the inventor Marlshrike has gone missing.”

  “Gone missing?” Uncle asked sharply. “What’s this?”

  “Packed and gone. An hour ago, if not less. No signs of any struggle.”

  “Well, I don’t have him,” Uncle scowled. “So what of the Queen? And the Prince Royal?”

  Grimstone shrugged.

  “Well,” Uncle snapped, “we’ll have to go in through the tunnels and find out.” He got up from his chair and hurried to the door, pulling a bellpull—and then he turned, seemingly almost as an afterthought, and reached out to take Venetta Deleon’s hand.

  When she put her fingers in his, she felt a sharp jab.

  And saw his cold smile as he lifted his hand to display that one of the rings he wore had a fang turned to the inside—a little point now slick and dark with her blood.

  She reeled, feeling suddenly ice-cold, then burning hot.

  Poison!

  “What have you done to me?” she gasped, as the room seemed to darken.

  She took a leaning, limp-limbed step sideways, like a drunkard—and then collapsed across Uncle’s waiting arm, out cold.

  “Put you to sleep, my dear,” he told her. “I haven’t time to attend to you now, but you’ll bide here on my floor quite peacefully until this evening.”

  He looked at Grimstone, who had prudently moved back out of range, sighed, and said, “You needn’t fear. I’m no dullard—and, lacking Whipsnade, I have need of you. Round up all the Tentacles you can find in the next ten minutes or so and meet me down below, at the Black Bird. Everyone should come armed—three weapons or more, each. There will be, as they say, unpleasantness. Not to mention bloody constraint.”

  * * *

  The world was all raging, snarling fire, hot on her cheek and stinging her eyes and lungs—and then, quite suddenly, they were out of it and past.

  Though the great airship beneath her was rocking and lurching, minor explosions buffeting her ears from various places beneath her. From above her was coming an ominous hissing, like a steam boiler slowly whistling up to its singing, kettle-boiling height.

  The Steel Kiss shuddered as it flew on, the Tower of London far behind her but soon to come around again because she’d just put the helm hard over to send her ship into a tight turn.

  It seemed to fight against the bank she was putting it into, wanting to list in the opposite direction—and it was definitely sinking, growing sluggish in the air.

  Damn. Damn and blast.

  Aye, blast was exactly what had befallen it. Stray ordnance flung out by the explosions within the White Tower—which had lost its roof and much of its upper floor, though there was no telling yet if any royal heads had been blown apart in that eruption—had obviously done some damage to her ship.

  “What’s happened?” she snarled, struggling with the controls, despite knowing the answer. Gunfire was coming at her from the Lanthorn Tower, and her ship was slowly but relentlessly sinking.

  She sighed, turned the wheel hard over the other way, and departed the battlefield.

  “Live to fight another day,” she murmured, reaching for her wineglass again. “Constance may be my name, but to it should be added, ‘And Everlasting Bloody Patience.’”

  And she sailed away, trying to nurse her airship over the rest of London and out into the countryside before it sank low enough to start striking rooftops.

  * * *

  Uncle smiled. “We got here in time. They won’t be getting out this way.”

  “Oh?” Whipsnade asked.

  Uncle gestured. “Traitor’s Gate was rebuilt long ago. Notice anything unusual about the inner gates?”

  “Those fins?”

  “Indeed. They’re hulls. A dozen boats, concealed in the water gate itself—a means of escape the Queen and the Prince Royal can’t use now, unless they want to be riddled with bullets.”

  “So we have them trapped?”

  “They don’t know it yet. They’ll flee instead into the ancient Roman sewers that connect to the tunnels. Which is where we want them to go.”

  Whipsnade knew better than to ask why. The Masters of the Order liked their opportunities to gloat, and masters were best kept happy.

  And after all, Uncle wouldn’t be able to resist telling him soon enough.

  * * *

  “That’s Lord Winter!” Rose whispered, in Tempest’s ear. “What is going on?”

  “He’s lighting a succession of torches and barring more than a few doors,” the tinkerer murmured. “I’d say he’s trying to guide or lure someone. And it almost has to be the Queen and the Prince, if they did come down here.”

  “So our play is?” Hardcastle rumbled, from behind them both.

  “Watch, and follow, taking care not to be heard or seen. I’d say the Lion Throne stands in sore need of whatever aid we can give right now.”

  “And where are we all heading,” Rose asked, “Winter and those with him and those he’s trying to guide?”

  “Somewhere under Whitechapel,
by the looks of things.” Tempest clutched his wounded shoulder for about the fortieth time and sighed. “Somehow I always end up in Whitechapel.”

  * * *

  Tempest had to admit that the cellar where they all ended up—yes, somewhere under Whitechapel—looked impressive. Its groined ceiling, pillars, and walls were all slick with damp, which reflected back the lights of hundreds of thick white altar candles. Those candles threw off an almost-oppressive warmth.

  There was even an altar. A huge rectangular ancient stone block of an altar with black hangings behind it, scores of rippling dark pleats across which wandered tentacles. Lots of tentacles.

  A drawn and tired-looking Queen, a grim-faced Prince Royal, and two wounded and bleeding soldiers faced Uncle and Grimstone and seven other Order members—burly men, all—across the dancing candle flames.

  Tempest, Rose, and Hardcastle lurked well back in the darkness behind the royal party, their presence hopefully not known to any of the others. Yet.

  Uncle smiled his warmest smile. “Welcome to the lair of the Elder.”

  The Queen seemed unamused. “Lord Winter,” she snapped, “what is the meaning of this?”

  “The meaning of this,” Uncle replied triumphantly, “is that the Ancient Order of Tentacles has two proper sacrifices in our grasp at last. And as our cause is right, we shall do what we must.”

  “Explain yourself, man,” the Prince Royal said coldly.

  Lord Winter’s smile went smug. “You are about to learn the real secret of our Order. That those who serve long and well are chosen to receive the Deep Blessing.”

  The Prince sighed. “Why don’t you gloatingly tell us what the Deep Blessing is?”

  “Thank you,” Lord Winter replied tartly. “I shall. The Deep Blessing is an alchemical concoction drunk from the Grail—yes, that Grail. The true Grail. Arthur’s cup. Its keeping is the first duty of our Order, and in that sense we are far more the guardians of the Empire than you mere warmers of the Lion Throne. Only the Elders know how to brew the Deep Blessing, and to drink it is to join their ranks.”

  “And who are the Elders?”

  Lord Winter gestured as grandly as any master of a music hall introducing a new act, and the dark tapestries swirled and parted.