“Ah.”
“If you’d feel safer here, you can stay while Dan and I go. Or Dan can stay too, and I’ll go alone.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Freddie.” Sophie had her little pistol in her hand, ready to defend herself or her friends if necessary. “Lead the way.”
“What we really could have used is a map of the warehouse,” Freddie mused as she lifted her own weapon in readiness and opened the office’s inner door and peeked into the warehouse. She expected darkness, but a line of dimly lit gas lanterns provided a chilly illumination over the broad expanse of the warehouse floor, which seemed to contain mostly unmarked crates, all the way to the broad, open rectangle of water at the building’s far end. The submersible dock.
Gesturing with her free hand for the other two to follow, Freddie ventured forward into the vast space, stopping short between two piles of crates when she heard a clanking noise and a string of explicit curses from up ahead.
“This isn’t sharp,” the vulgarian said, “but it should do to fetch you out of the water. Let’s see how long you survive in the open air, you poisonous, blinky bastard.”
More clanking followed, then a wrenching metal-on-metal squeak and another loud curse.
A moment later a man walked through her narrow angle of view, carrying a long pole with a spike-barbed hook on the end. A fishing gaff. Freddie tiptoed forward until a sharp tap on her shoulder brought her up short and she nearly screamed. It was Dan, and when she turned with a furious query in her eyes, he gestured most emphatically that they should all return to the office.
She shook her head. There were three of them, and there seemed to be only one man up ahead. Decent odds, and perhaps he would give up more information. She pressed forward to crouch behind a crate beside the dock itself. The man had disappeared, taking his wicked-looking gaff with him. When Freddie leaned forward, risking a quick peek to the left and right along the water, she saw no one.
Down in the water, a soft light glowed in a steady rhythm, mesmerizing.
What the hell is that?
But when she turned again to ask Dan if he knew, the big man’s back was to her, his hands in the air. And Sophie, who’d been bringing up the rear . . . the man from the dock held her firmly around the neck with one arm, while his other hand pressed a revolver muzzle to her temple.
• • •
IF PHINEAS HADN’T already piloted much larger subs through the piers many times, they never would have managed to weave through the supports in the dark to get the Gilded Lily safely to Furneval’s warehouse. Safety was, of course, a relative state in this context. Barnabas didn’t care. Anything would be better than the literally hair-raising submersible ride through a pitch-black obstacle course.
“I’ll surface as close to the dock as I can,” Phineas told him. “Be ready to pop the hatch and jump out. If you can find a mooring rope, toss it over, but don’t waste time with it. And for God’s sake, no itchy trigger finger. I don’t care if Furneval has a dozen men training guns on us from the side of the dock, I want you to keep your hand off your pistol until you’re completely outside the vessel.”
“Aye aye, captain.”
“Now is not the time for sarcasm.”
They broke the surface and Phineas spun the valve lock and opened the hatch, looking about to get his bearings once he was atop the submersible. When he saw the tableau of players already there, he froze. “Oh, dammit all to hell.”
“Just get out,” Phineas reminded him.
“Yes, get out,” said the man with the pistol to Sophie Wallingford’s head. “Come join your friends. Your companion too.”
Barnabas leaped awkwardly to the dock beside the hatch, his kick sending the sub bobbing away. A mooring rope lay coiled nearby, and he tossed the looped end into the hatch opening. Phineas, rising from the hatch, took the heavy hawser in the shoulder with a curse.
“Oh, you little bastard,” hissed the gunman.
“Hello, Rollo,” Phineas replied calmly, as he braced himself and pulled the sub and himself back toward the dockside. Once there, he jumped out nimbly and strode toward the group, with what Barnabas had to assume was more confidence than he actually felt.
“I’ll save you for last,” the villain declared, in a more conversational tone than before. “Too bad Edwin won’t be here to help me. He’d have enjoyed what I’m going to do to your friends. It can be a memorial tribute of sorts, I suppose, for all of them.”
“Believe what you will, but I am sorry for the loss of your men. I counted some of them as friends too. Not Edwin, I admit.”
Freddie appeared unharmed, to Barnabas’s vast relief. She had a weak little smile for him, which he attempted to return. Her presence there was a shock, as was Dan’s, and he couldn’t imagine what it meant in relation to the message the man had delivered him last night. His anger and melancholy vanished at that hint of a smile, melting away as shame heated his cheeks. He should never have believed ill of her. Not his Freddie; she could never betray him like that, and he’d been a fool to even entertain the notion for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. He was glad to have seen her this one last time, if it was to be the end. It didn’t feel like it ought to be the end, though. There were four of them there, ranged against Furneval. Surely they could do something to save Sophie and themselves, with the numbers so clearly on their side?
She just looked puzzled. “What for? None of this is your fault.”
“Shut up, both of you,” snapped the man with the gun, who Barnabas presumed was Rollo Furneval. He looked like a drug kingpin. A claret jacket, too bright for the current fashion, with flashy velvet trim and brass buttons. An ornate gilt poppy at his lapel, that looked familiar. The man wasn’t tall but he was powerfully built, with dark hair mussed with sweat, and intelligent but shifty eyes. He looked like he might easily be a cold-blooded killer.
Sophie was pale, and her usually serene face now showed all her distress. Panic flared in her eyes, and where she clutched the arm that pinned her so close, Barnabas could see her knuckles were white as bone. She would leave a fine set of bruises on Furneval, at least. Dan and Freddie stood motionless, hands raised over their shoulders, and Barnabas quickly assumed the same pose. His pistol was still in his pocket, but it was useless to him at the moment.
“Right, then. The four of you are going into a cargo hold.” Furneval nodded his head toward one wall of the warehouse, where Barnabas could see a line of doors. “Straight line, quick march. Or the lady gets it.”
As the last words left his mouth, the earth shifted beneath their feet, the boards creaking ominously as a rumble began to build.
As they were thrown off balance, Furneval’s grip on Sophie loosened, and she leaned forward, trying to break free.
Barnabas reached out a foot and touched Dan’s boot, getting his attention. They shared a look, Barnabas thinking his hasty plan as hard as he could. If we rush together, now while he’s distracted, perhaps it will work.
Dan blinked, then nodded. Barnabas glanced to his left to see Phineas watching him too. Three against one.
Barnabas folded down the fingers of one hand, counting down silently. On zero, they ran, closing the paces between them and Furneval in the second it took him to raise his gun and fire.
Not at Sophie, who had ducked under his arm and raced away, but at the closest of the three men. Dan howled in pain but kept running, diving straight into Furneval’s midsection and flattening him to the dock. Freddie rushed past Barnabas and Phineas to kick the gun from Furneval’s hand, stumbling as the floor pitched.
She ran to retrieve the weapon while the brothers dog-piled onto Dan and Furneval. Punches flew, bodies flailed, and eventually they wrestled Furneval into something like submission. Dan rolled away, his arms falling limp at his sides. His shirt and jacket were blood-soaked, but black powder marked the wound near his left should
er.
“No!” Sophie shouted, running to his side. “Daniel, no!”
“Rollo Furneval,” Phineas said, jerking Furneval to his feet and neatly twisting one of the man’s arms behind his back to hold him. “I hereby arrest you in the name of—”
“Dear God in heaven!” Furneval shouted, eyes widening as he looked toward the water. “Run. Run!”
“I’m not falling for that one,” Phineas snorted, jerking on the pinned arm. “Oldest trick in the—oh, hell.”
It might have been hell, at that. A watery hell, a maelstrom leading to the abyss, with man-thick tentacles rising from Satan’s pit to drag sinners down to their doom.
The thing was pulsing in that same pattern . . . no, more than one thing, Barnabas realized with growing terror. He counted at least two heads and far more than the eight tentacles and two additional “arms” of one creature. And the appendages were busy, some of them, exploring out of the water.
A groaning metallic screech sounded from one side of the dock, and one of the tentacles raised something high in the air. In the dim light, Barnabas only made out a hazy rectangle, a darker frame with some translucent material in the center.
Water roiled over the edge of the boards, the product of either the flailing creatures or the still-trembling earth.
“He’s right, we need to get out!” Freddie shouted. But another seismic jolt sent them reeling, and a pile of crates, stacked too high and precariously by Furneval’s careless crew, chose that moment to topple. The top crate knocked the next row over as it tumbled down, the start of an oversized domino effect that left the warehouse floor between the group and the doors a nearly impassable landscape of upended containers. Some of the crates split as they fell, adding jagged splinters and stakes to the hazardous mix, as well as mounds of packets wrapped in burlap and oilcloth.
Sophie and Phineas pulled Dan clear of the danger zone, and then they all watched in horror as one of the larger tentacles, seeking restlessly along the dock, came within a few feet of their position. In desperation, Sophie seized one of the dark, greasy-looking bundles, which was at least as big as a small loaf and looked more solid in her hand. Barnabas thought she would fling it at the creature’s limb like a projectile, but instead the clever woman bowled the packet into the path of the tentacle’s next questing undulation.
The moment the cuttlefish’s sensitive suckers contacted the thing, it wrapped its tentacle around it like a python and snatched it away . . . straight into the ready, gaping maw at the base of its appendages.
“My product!” Furneval bellowed, and sprang toward the dock’s edge, ignoring the revolver Freddie still had aimed at him.
“Stop right there or I will shoot you, sir,” she shouted at him. He slid to a halt on the slick, shaking boards, skidding around to face her. “And before you think to yourself, ‘She’s a girl, she doesn’t have the nerve,’ I feel I must tell you I look on that man you injured as a brother. Furthermore I have no intention of shooting to kill, and I shall feel no hesitation or guilt whatsoever about shooting to maim.” She shifted her aim from his head to his leg. At point-blank range, there was no way to miss. Barnabas wanted to applaud.
It happened so quickly they had no time to react. Another massive tentacle, fast as a striking snake, encircled Furneval’s waist and pulled him off his feet, dragging him inexorably over the edge. He grabbed at something, though, before the beast could pull him under. A mesh container of some sort, perhaps for shellfish or the like, had been fastened to the dockside and suspended in the water. Though being dragged over it must have cost him more injuries, Barnabas thought the odd cage might save the smuggler’s life. While he hung over its lip, head and shoulders barely out of the churning water, Barnabas and Phineas had time to react, lunging toward him to help him struggle free of the monster’s death grip.
Freddie had time to regroup as well. Furneval saw her pointing the revolver at him and screamed, but she shot true—straight into the meat of the tentacle, severing it from the creature.
“Good shot, sweetheart!” Barnabas shouted, grinning at her astonished expression. He and Phineas reached for Furneval’s grateful outstretched hand when a change in the lighting registered with him. Instead of their steady blinking, the cephalopods had suddenly begun to shimmer in rippling waves along their length, mesmerizing.
All of them, including the two-foot-long specimen in the cage. Before they could reach Furneval, the small creature launched itself straight into his face, wrapping its tentacles around his head. His body twitched violently for a few seconds, then went limp, arms losing their hold on the cage. He sank back, the baby cuttlefish clinging to his face, and the swirling water covered him as though he’d never been there.
Barnabas registered, through his horror, the danger they were all in. More giant cuttlefish had risen to take the place of the injured beast and, he realized, the one that had swallowed the bundle of opium.
Freddie and Sophie, however, had already come up with a solution. They threw brick after brick of opium toward each tentacle as it approached their position, occupying and disabling the beasts, while Barnabas and Phineas cleared a navigable path through the wreckage of the warehouse.
“At least the earthquake has stopped,” Freddie pointed out when he and his brother returned to show them all the way out.
“Small blessings.”
Not nearly enough to balance out the greater misfortunes. Sophie had left the opium-tossing to Freddie and returned to Dan’s side. Weeping, she pressed a fold of Dan’s jacket against the hole in his chest in a vain effort to staunch the blood. The cloth was long since saturated, and Barnabas didn’t have the heart to tell her that the hole in Dan’s back, where the bullet had left his body, was thrice the size. Barnabas had glimpsed it in the melee and been momentarily astonished at the man’s ability to keep fighting, before his attention was drawn to more pressing matters.
But even Dan’s size and strength were no match for a bullet in the chest. Not the heart, perhaps, or he’d never have lasted as long as he had. But certainly his lung had been hit. Air bubbled ominously from the hole when Sophie took her blood-drenched hands away.
“Don’t die. Please don’t, Dan. I’m not worth this.”
Phineas knelt beside her. “You are, but I know that hardly helps. I think it’s time to say your good-byes.” He put a comforting arm around her shoulders, but she shoved him away angrily.
“Don’t touch me! You did this. If it weren’t for you being such a juvenile fool in the first place, running off to cavort in opium dens and abandoning your post and—”
“But I . . . I was assigned to—”
“Daniel would never have been here, and this never would have happened.”
Freddie flung another several thousand pounds sterling worth of opium into the water, but the cuttlefish seemed to have retreated once the quake stopped, either the seismic easing or the consumption of raw opium soothing their agitation. The small one too might have been sending a distress signal. Once it was free, perhaps the creatures saw no reason to stay.
When the water remained still for a few moments after the last packet had splashed down, she joined the group huddled around Daniel, taking one of his oversized hands into her two smaller ones and pressing it to her cheek.
Dan smiled in her direction, his strength waning fast but the shock evidently numbing him to some of the pain.
“Can’t . . . feel . . .” he attempted, but lacked the wind to finish the thought.
“It was my fault,” Freddie told him, leaning close to make sure he could hear. “You did the right thing, Dan; you were absolutely right to be worried. If I’d stayed where I ought to, this wouldn’t have happened. You’re a good man, and I’ll make sure your mother knows. I’ll see to it she knows you were a hero.”
He blinked at her, then turned his head just far enough to see Sophie. He bestowed a final smile, sw
eet and boyish, on her.
“Lady . . .”
He used his last breath on the word. Barnabas didn’t realize how loud his wet, sucking gasps had grown until they stopped, leaving only the plaintive sound of sobbing behind.
Kneeling by Freddie, Barnabas put his arm around her and pressed a kiss to her temple. She’d lost the cap at some point in her adventures that evening, and her ember-bright hair fell loose, tickling his nose.
“I love you,” he whispered in the vicinity of her ear. “I love you.”
She nodded, and replied in a voice choked by grief. “Yes. I love you too. Take me home, Barnabas.”
TWENTY-FOUR
HE DID TAKE her home, though not as soon as Freddie would have liked. First they had to return to her father’s home and face what Freddie was sure would be a storm of wrath like she’d never known.
Instead, when they trudged through the front door, heartsick and weary, Freddie was nearly bowled over by her mother.
In a stream of nearly incoherent French, Maman excoriated her father, wailing her chagrin over leaving Freddie alone and subject to the fickle lunacies of the English, and then several items about the state of her soul and the lackluster tone of her complexion that Freddie allowed herself to gloss over. She calmed her mother as patiently as she could, assuring her that she was safe, that England was hardly to blame for the state of her soul or skin and that they ought to be speaking English in deference to the others. Sophie spoke beautiful French, of course, but she had no idea if the Smith-Grenvilles knew a word of it.
Then she attempted to make introductions, but as soon as she spoke Barnabas’s name, her mother went off again.
Halfway through the fresh spate of outrage, her father stepped into the front hall, his aristocratic face lined with sorrow and relief.
“Oh, thank God, you’re alive. Is that—the blood, is it yours? I’ll send for the surgeon.”
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