Gilded Lily

by Delphine Dryden

  “She would never—”

  “And if she tells him all the rest you won’t be safe in Europa or the Dominions either. South America might give you a fighting chance. It might. But not if you dither away your lead time.”

  “What do you mean, all the rest?”

  “I’m certain we both know what I mean, Barnabas. Are you really going to make me say it aloud?” Phineas raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  The inn. The night they’d spent together. “No. Of course not.”

  “Perhaps this letter is code, although I can’t think for what. Or perhaps, and this seems more likely to me, a young girl got into trouble far over her head and, when confronted by the primary authority figure in her life, realized what a dismal fool she’d been. Realized the risks she’d taken by exploring things she shouldn’t. And of course Murcheson wouldn’t have told her if he was sending people to arrest you. Whether or not that letter is genuine, you have to get out of here before they show up.”

  He’d known Phineas all his life, and only known Freddie a short time. Should he weigh his own irrational hope against the opinion of his brother, whom he trusted, and who after all was only taking the letter at face value?

  He read the letter again, trying to see it objectively. Phineas’s version of things did make more sense, didn’t it? From the stories Freddie had told him, her father’s approval meant more to her than she would ever admit directly. Even in her effort to escape Murcheson’s control, she had sought to prove herself to him. And she’d never spoken to Barnabas of the future, of a life they might share together, had she? Far from it.

  They were still at the foot of the stairs. Barnabas gripped the ornate wooden finial on the post for support, trying to steady himself against the crushing fear that his brother was absolutely correct.

  “She said—no, it can’t be that.”

  “Can’t be what?”

  He swallowed, forcing back a painful lump of some emotion he couldn’t bring himself to name. “She said I was convenient. And beautiful. But—”

  “She called you beautiful? She’s such an odd girl.”

  “I think . . . I think she used me.”

  Phineas’s silence was deafening. Meanwhile Barnabas’s mind kept offering images of Freddie, each smile, every dimple, but seen now through quite a different lens. Friendly and eager, because that had been the best way to seduce him. Honest to a fault, because she’d seen it was getting her everything she wanted. What would be the point in lying? She’d told him what he was to her, and he hadn’t listened. He’d heard what he wanted to. Not surprising, as evidently he’d been listening with his cock, not his heart as he’d convinced himself.

  He’d come all this way, he thought he might have found some sort of strange, stolen happiness at last, and instead he’d been slapped in the face with his own inadequacies. By a girl in trousers.

  A beautiful, convenient girl in trousers, who’d sown him like a wild oat.

  “Is this what it felt like?” he asked his brother. “Is this why you had to leave everything?”

  “No. That part comes later, when you see her married to another man.”

  It cut him deeply enough now, just thinking about it. Actually witnessing that would be too deep a wound to survive. But he owed Freddie Murcheson one thing, at least. His brother, back by his side. If nothing else good came of this wretched trip to England, he had still managed to salvage Phineas from the wreckage.

  “What are you going to do now?” he asked him. “Go to the Admiral? Or to Murcheson?”

  “The Gilded Lily is still waiting,” Phineas reminded him. “It’s fast and maneuverable, more so than you’ve seen. Miss Murcheson didn’t know all its capabilities. I’m going to take it and do what I can to disperse the cephalopods before Furneval and his subs can get to them. At least it will forestall the slaughter until I can think of something better, and perhaps the distraction will buy enough time to allow the station crew to repair the Glass Octopus. I’ll start at the coordinates where we found the squid shoal before, then use signal lanterns to try to draw them away. I don’t know if it will work, and I suspect there’s a fair chance one of the creatures will catch me and put an end to me. And you’re off to South America, so I suppose this is good-bye.”

  He’d lost Freddie, or rather learned that he’d never had her to begin with. He’d lost his job, or would as soon as Murcheson caught up with him. Barnabas wasn’t ready to lose a brother today on top of all that.

  “It’s not good-bye. I’m coming with you.”

  • • •

  MORDECAI HAD BEEN BUSY.

  Sometimes, Rollo was pleased with the things his friend accomplished when he grew busy. But many times, and Rollo feared this was one of those, nothing good came of it.

  He had squinted down through the sluggish, slopping brine at the queer assemblage of poles and mesh attached to the side of the small submersible as it departed the concealed warehouse dock, and thought, This will end badly, I just know it.

  “You promised,” Mord had reminded him when he showed him the contraption, because for all his eccentricities the little man knew Rollo very well. He knew that Rollo sometimes needed reminding of his promises. He knew Rollo was capable of breaking promises too. But not the ones he made to Mord, never those. Not yet, anyway.

  “I did.”

  “This one’s fast and little. We take it out, three of us, and when we find the baby cuttlefish we come alongside and just scoop it in!”

  “Scoop it in?” The cage contraption was a cube about the height of a man on each side. Having seen the squid things move, Rollo was skeptical that the submersible could get close enough to scoop one into a trap that small, but he wasn’t about to express that skepticism to Mord.

  “Just scoop it right in,” Mord had repeated, attempting to illustrate the method with his arms. “Scoop. Like that. Then the cuttlefish gets swept along, see, and it can’t escape because it can’t swim faster than the sub.”

  “At some point the submersible must stop. What then?”

  “By then the baby’s tired out. We drive the sub back here, some divers hop into the water to rotate the cage, tie a net on top for a cover, and Bob’s your uncle.”

  “And if all goes according to plan, we then have a baby cuttlefish in our submersible dock?”

  “I’m designing a tank for it. A tank. Such a tank, you wait and see.”

  Rollo feared he knew already. He recognized the light of lunatic genius in Mord’s eyes. Such a tank would be large and costly, and must be left behind if ever they had to abandon this place in a hurry. Leaving the authorities to wonder, no doubt, about the mental stability of one Rollo Furneval. Because who kept a giant blinking squid in an opium warehouse? But then somebody would realize the tank’s cobbled-together pump solved some heretofore unsolvable problem of hydraulic engineering, or find that the glass was of a structure never seen before, because Mordecai did things like that. Rollo had tried to get him to do it on command, but that wasn’t how his friend operated, and he’d learned over the years that serendipity was all he could hope for. He kept his promises, he kept Mord happy and occupied, and occasionally it resulted in something spectacular. Even more rarely, it turned out to be wildly profitable, which was what really mattered to Rollo.

  This didn’t feel like wild profit in the making, but he’d let it play out and see what happened. Perhaps the squid would turn out to be a source of an ink nobody had ever seen before, or be filled with a rare chemical he could claim exclusive rights to. Or there might turn out to be a lucrative market for enormous cuttlebones.

  The spotter had spied the inbound sub only two hours or so after it had left the dock. Relieved, Rollo waited by the secret dock, along with the two unhappy gentlemen he’d selected as divers. Young, fit, with sound lungs, but infinitely replaceable, both of them. They shivered in their combinations as the sub ap
proached, though it was a fine day. When the cage rig scraped along the edge of the docking bay, Rollo looked into it and had to laugh.

  “I think you’ll be safe enough,” he told the lads with a snort.

  The bolder of the two leaned over to have a look, and chuckled in relief. “That’s all?”

  The cuttlefish was a baby indeed, and what was more, Rollo suspected it hadn’t survived its capture and subsequent journey. It clung like a scrap of colorless rag to the roof of the cage, the part that would be on one side once the boys twisted it about. They jumped into the water fearlessly once the sub’s engine had stopped and the propellers were still, and had just begun to grapple with the cage when the vessel’s hatch opened. Mord popped out, hair in every direction, eyes so wide the white showed below his irises.

  “Is it still there? Do you see it?”

  “Oh, it’s still there.”

  “Take care with those latches. Don’t startle it,” Mord called to the divers, only one of whom was at the surface to hear him.

  “I think it’s had all the startling already, Mord. I don’t think it’s possible to startle it any further.”

  “They’re very sensitive.”

  The second diver surfaced, shaking his wet hair from his eyes. “It’s unlatched. I’ll go back under and pull up, you go hand over hand from that pole to this.

  Between them, they managed to spin the cage and secure it, under Mord’s watchful eye, to the hooks he’d anchored in two of the pier’s supports. To finish the job, they slid the final panel of mesh into place on top of the cage. By the time it was all secure, the sub was moored as well, and as soon as he was off it Mordecai ran along the dock, flopping onto the boards with his face hanging over the edge, nose to the wires of the top panel.

  “Is it moving? Has it changed its appearance?”

  “Nah,” one of the divers said, reaching a hand underwater toward the side of the cage where the bedraggled marine creature still clung, its freakish tentacles woven through the mesh. “I think it’s having a nice rest.”

  He flicked the water close to the animal with his fingers, causing hardly a ripple on the surface, and no reaction from the cuttlefish. His mate laughed, and splashed a handful of water at him.

  “See how you like it.”

  “You’re going to frighten him,” Mordecai muttered darkly.

  Ignoring his warning, the first boy braced his hand on the cage, cupping his other hand to send a proper volley back to his friend. That was his mistake.

  “Oy! The little bugger’s got me!” He grabbed the dock, attempting to pull free of the creature’s suddenly active tentacles. “It’s stronger than it—ow! Fucking hell, it bit me! Get it off me, get it off!”

  “Just swim away,” his colleague said, paddling to the dock and clinging there, safely away from the cage. “It’s a baby, just swim away from it!”

  “Get it—aaah! Ahh . . .”

  He dipped under and came back up struggling, obviously from more than the ducking. Rollo watched closely as the boy’s body went into convulsions, thrashing so violently that he actually rose in the water and finally broke his hand free of the cuttlefish’s embrace. Too late, obviously. His body jerked for a few seconds only, then went limp except for the spastic movements of his terrified eyes. The second time he went down, he stayed under, only bubbles marking his passage from the world of the living to whatever lay beyond. The other boy gaped, too shocked to even consider a rescue. Nor did Rollo recommend one. The cuttlefish had taken its due, and he eyed it with a newfound respect.

  “Interesting.”

  “Neurotoxins in the saliva!” chirped Mord, who was practically wriggling with excitement as he watched his new pet relocate itself, then change color to blend seamlessly with the mesh on which it rested. “Thank you, Roland!”

  “Anything for you, Mord.”

  “I think I’m going to call him Albert.”

  In his watery new home, young Albert shifted his tentacles once more and began to emit a soft, pulsing glow.

  TWENTY-ONE

  IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON by the time Rutherford Murcheson finally visited his daughter’s locked room. He was safe enough entering, and they both knew it, because he’d taken almost everything out of the place that might serve as a weapon. She might use the mantel clock as a bludgeon, but the resulting outcry or thud would be sure to alert the gigantic henchman outside her door. His name was Maurice, she’d learned when he carried in her luncheon tray. He seemed nice, but she suspected that wouldn’t last long in the face of an attempted escape by timepiece.

  At least that meal and its accompanying beverages had been blissfully free of opiates, as far as she could tell. Still, when her father came into her room and closed the door behind him, she said what she’d been planning to since that nasty breakfast surprise.

  “Father. Would you like a nice cup of tea? Or perhaps some wine?”

  It fell flat, probably because it had sounded too studied. He just raised his eyebrows at her and pulled out the second chair, joining her at the table.

  “The mutton wasn’t bad at all at luncheon; did Cook send that up for you?”

  “Don’t speak to me of mutton.”

  “Would you rather I speak of the likely consequences for theft of a military vessel, should the Navy or the higher-ups at my own Agency ever learn of what you’ve been up to?”

  “You have higher-ups?” Somehow she’d envisioned her father at the top of the heap, the bodies of his foes strewn beneath his feet.

  “Oh, yes. Everybody does. Even you, my little tinker. You’ve just managed to escape their notice thus far. What, you thought I didn’t know?”

  She had thought that, yes, but it hardly seemed to matter now. “If you knew, why didn’t you stop me?”

  “You were enjoying yourself.” He shrugged, then traced an aimless line on the tablecloth with one finger. “You were always so talented at makesmithing, you know. You could have become a master, given time. Not that I would have allowed my daughter to go into a manual trade, of course, but I thought it did you no harm to play about with clockwork animals and the like. It was really your mother who insisted I stop taking you along to the factory. But she isn’t here, and this hobby gave you something to do. You’ve always been at your worst when you’re idle too long. As long as Daniel was with you or, heaven help us, some unfortunate agent of mine, I thought it was safe enough. Safer than some of the things you might be out doing instead, anyway. I was right too, until Smith-Grenville came along. I should have known better than to take on another one of those. They’re not to be trusted, as I suspect you’ve now realized. The elder is no better than the younger.”

  She thought of the things Phineas had said, the different perspective he offered regarding his reliability and why he’d done what he’d done. And thought too of the timing. The trouble had started before Barnabas entered the picture, hadn’t it? But again, it didn’t seem important anymore to pick out the details. She could spend a lifetime trying to sift the grains of truth from the beach of lies, and still never learn a way to make Barnabas not be faithless. He had to be the one who’d betrayed her.

  “You can’t keep me here forever.”

  “I can keep you until you tell me where my damn submersible is.”

  “I have no idea where it is,” she said truthfully. If all had gone according to plan, Phineas had moved it from Mersea, but she hadn’t been thinking clearly enough the previous evening to ask him the new location. She’d expected to speak with him today, of course. “I know where it was last night, but it’s long gone from there by now.”

  “Freddie, this is no laughing matter. That sub carries vital surveillance equipment. You know there are still smugglers carrying opium in the channel; everyone knows it. Well, that sub may help us track the smugglers. Stop the illegal opium trade. That would benefit us all.”

  She would h
ave believed him if she hadn’t already known the truth. She never would have suspected. He was that good, that smooth, and he sounded as if it meant so much to him.

  “You want the Gilded Lily back to help you protect the seismograph. Because if that’s destroyed, if the Glass Octopus is ruined past all usefulness, Whitehall won’t pay to support your undersea station anymore.” There, now he knew that she knew, and they could simply be open with one another. “I laud your efforts to further the cause of science, but the Glass Octopus is wasted if you’re not going to use the information it provides to warn the general public about impending quakes.”

  “I ought to throw away the key to that door. I might too, if you don’t return the Gilded Lily.”

  Freddie pushed back from the table and stood up, pacing toward the window, wishing for fresh air. “I don’t have it on my person, and I truly don’t know its current location. As of last night, it was on Mersea Island. If I knew where it was now I would tell you, because I don’t care anymore. About much of anything, really. But you should know it isn’t the smugglers sabotaging your precious seismograph, so hunting after them won’t solve your problem. I’m surprised Lord Smith-Grenville hasn’t already told you that, since he was so forthcoming with information.”

  “What do you mean? And of course they’re the saboteurs. We’ve already investigated the French, so thoroughly they’re probably still having nightmares about it.”

  She knew before she spoke what it would sound like. She told him anyway, consequences be damned. “It isn’t the smugglers, and it isn’t sabotage. The sensors are being disabled by enormous cephalopods who may or may not be interpreting the flashing lights as some sort of signal or trigger related to the earthquakes. There’s a chance they may be able to predict quakes, better than even your equipment.”

  “Cephalopods.”

  “Yes. Giant ones. Like squid, or perhaps cuttlefish.”

  “Cuttlefish.”

  “Yes. Oh, and they can turn invisible. Camouflage themselves, I mean, on any sort of surface. And sometimes they . . . glow.”