Blameless pp-3

by Gail Carriger

  Madame Lefoux looked disappointed.

  The Templar elaborated further. “Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf referred to it as an aether absorption counter. Would you allow me to demonstrate its application?”

  “Please do!”

  Without further ado, the man placed the wand into his mouth, closing his lips about the rubber stopper. No change occurred. The machine continued to emit the same metallic clicking noise.

  “It is still registering.”

  The preceptor removed the wand. “Exactly!” He carefully wiped the wand down with a small piece of cloth soaked in some kind of yellow alcohol. “Now, My Soulless One, if you would be so kind?”

  Eyebrows arched with interest, Alexia took the wand and did as he had done, closing her lips about the end. The wand tasted pleasantly of some sweetened lemony liquor. Whatever the preceptor had used to clean it was mighty tasty. Distracted by the taste, it took Alexia a moment to notice that the clicking noise had entirely stopped.

  “Bless my soul!” exclaimed Madame Lefoux, perhaps not so wary as she should have been over her use of religious language in the house of Christ’s most devout warriors.

  “Merph!” said Alexia with feeling.

  “Well, then, it cannot possibly be registering aether. Aether is around and inside of everything, perhaps in more minor quantities groundside than it is up in the aether-atmospheric layer, but it is here. To silence it like that, Alexia would have to be dead.”

  “Merph,” agreed Alexia.

  “So we have previously thought.”

  Alexia was moved by a need to speak and so removed the wand from her mouth. The device began ticking again. “Are you saying the soul is composed of aether? That is practically a sacrilegious concept.” She cleaned the end as the preceptor had done, with more of the yellow alcohol, and passed it to Madame Lefoux.

  Madame Lefoux turned the wand about, examining it with interest before popping it into her own mouth. It continued ticking. “Merfeaux” was her considered opinion.

  The preceptor’s flat, blank eyes did not stop staring at Alexia. “Not exactly. More that the lack of a soul is characterized by increased absorption of ambient aetheric particles into the skin, much in the way that a vacuum sucks air in to fill its void. Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf has theorized for years that preternatural abilities are the result of a lack of internally produced aether, and to compensate, the preternatural body seeks to absorb ambient aether from the outside. He invented this machine to test the theory.”

  Floote shifted slightly from his customary stance near the door, then stilled.

  “When it is in my mouth, it detects nothing because I have nothing to detect? Because I am absorbing it all through my skin instead?”

  “Precisely.”

  Madame Lefoux asked brightly, “So could this device detect excess soul?”

  “Sadly, no. Only the absence of soul. And since most preternaturals are registered with the local government, or are at least known, such an instrument is mainly useless except to confirm identity. As I have just done with you, My Soulless One. I must say, your presence presents me with a bit of a conundrum.” He took the wand back from Madame Lefoux, cleaned it once more, and switched the machine off. It let out one little wheeze and then the metallic clicking noise stopped.

  Alexia stared at it while the preceptor capped the wand with the little glass jar and then covered the machine with the white linen cloth. It was odd to encounter an instrument that existed solely for one purpose—to tell the world that she was different.

  “What do you Templars call that little device?” Alexia was curious, for he had specified that “aether absorption counter” was Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf’s name for it.

  The preceptor did not flinch. “A daemon detector, of course.”

  Alexia was decidedly taken aback. “Is that what I am?” She turned to look accusingly at Madame Lefoux. “You would tell me if I suddenly developed a forked red tail, wouldn’t you?”

  Madame Lefoux pursed her lips provocatively. “Would you like me to check under your skirts?”

  Alexia backpedaled hurriedly. “On second thought, I think I should notice such a protuberance myself.”

  Floote wrinkled one corner of his nose in a remarkably understated sneer. “You are a daemon to them, madam.”

  “Now, gentlemen.” Madame Lefoux leaned back, crossed her arms, and dimpled at them all. “Be fair. The last I heard was that the church was referring to preternaturals as devil spawn.”

  Alexia was confused. “But you gave me a bed… and this rather excitable nightgown… and a robe. That is hardly the way to treat devil spawn.”

  “Yes, but you can see why none of the brothers would talk to you.” Madame Lefoux was clearly finding this part of the conversation amusing.

  “And you understand the nature of our difficulty with your presence among us?” The preceptor seemed to think this fact obvious.

  Floote interjected, his tone gruff. “You have found good use for her kind before, sir.”

  “In the past,” the preceptor said to Floote, “we rarely had to deal with females, and we had the daemons controlled and isolated from the rest of the Order.”

  Floote acted as though the Templar had inadvertently given up some vital piece of information. “In the past, sir? Have you given up your breeding program?”

  The man looked thoughtfully at Alessandro Tarabotti’s former valet and bit his lip as if wishing he could retract the information. “You have been gone from Italy a long time, Mr. Floote. I am under the impression that England’s Sir Francis Galton has some interest in expanding our initial research. ‘Eugenics,’ he is calling it. Presumably, he would need a method of measuring the soul first.”

  Madame Lefoux sucked in her breath. “Galton is a purist? I thought he was a progressive.”

  The Templar only blinked disdainfully at that. “Perhaps we should pause at this juncture. Would you like to see the city? Florence is very beautiful even at this time of year, if a trifle”—he glanced at Alexia—“orange. A little walk along the Arno, perhaps? Or would you prefer a nap? Tomorrow I have a small jaunt planned for your entertainment. I think you will enjoy it.”

  Apparently their audience with the preceptor had ended.

  Alexia and Madame Lefoux took the hint.

  The Templar looked at Floote. “I trust you can find your way back to your rooms? You will understand, it is impossible for me to ask a sanctified servant or brother to escort you.”

  “Oh, I understand perfectly, sir.” Floote led the way from the room in what might have been, for him, a huff.

  They began the long trek back to their quarters. The Florentine Temple was indeed vast. Alexia would have gotten hopelessly lost, but Floote appeared to know where to go.

  “Well, he was certainly very chatty.”

  Floote glanced at his mistress. “Too chatty, madam.” Floote’s walk was stiff—well, stiffer than normal—which meant he was upset about something.

  “And what does that mean?” Madame Lefoux, who had been distracted by a crude black onyx statue of a pig, trotted to catch up.

  “He does not intend to let us go, madam.”

  “But he just offered to allow us to explore Florence on our own.” Alexia was getting ever more confused by the highly contrary nature of these Templars and by Floote’s opinion of them. “We would be followed, you believe?”

  “Without question, madam.”

  “But why would they have anything to do with me? If they see me as some kind of soul-sucking daemon of spiritual annihilation?”

  “The Templars couple war with faith. They see you as incapable of salvation but still useful to them. You are a weapon, madam.”

  It was becoming evident that Floote had had far more exposure to the Templars than Alexia had previously thought. She had read many of her father’s journals, but clearly he had not written down everything.

  “If it is dangerous for me here, why did you agree to the jaunt?”

  Floote looked mi
ldly disappointed with her. “Aside from not having a choice? You did insist on Italy. There are different kinds of danger, madam. After all, good warriors take particular care of their weapons. And the Templars are very good warriors.”

  Alexia nodded. “Oh, I see. To stay alive, I must ensure they continue to think of me as such? I am beginning to wonder if proving to my bloody-minded husband that he is an imbecile is worth all this bother.”

  They arrived at their rooms and paused in the hallway before dispersing.

  “I do not mean to be callous, but I am finding I do not at all like this preceptor fellow,” declared Alexia firmly.

  “Apart from the obvious, why is that?” Madame Lefoux asked.

  “His eyes are peculiar. There is nothing in them, like an éclair without the cream filling. It’s wrong, lack of cream.”

  “It is as good a reason as any not to like a person,” replied Madame Lefoux. “Are you quite certain you do not wish me to check for that tail?”

  Alexia demurred. “Quite.” Sometimes she found the Frenchwoman’s flirtations unsettling.

  “Spoilsport,” said the inventor wryly before retreating into her room. Before Alexia could go into her own, she heard a cry of anger emerge from her friend.

  “Well, this is unconscionable!”

  Alexia and Floote exchanged startled looks.

  A tirade of French outrage flowed out the still partly open door.

  Alexia knocked timidly. “Are you quite all right, Genevieve?”

  “No, I am not! Imbeciles! Look what they have given me to wear!”

  Alexia nosed her way in to find Madame Lefoux, a look of abject horror on her face, holding up a dress of pink gingham so covered in ruffles as to put Alexia’s nightgown to shame.

  “It is an insult!”

  Alexia decided her best move at this juncture was a retreat. “You’ll let me know,” she said with a grin, pausing on the threshold, “if you need, perhaps, assistance with—oh, I don’t know—the bustle?”

  Madame Lefoux gave her a dirty look, and Alexia departed in possession of the field, only to find, across her own bed, a dress of equally layered outrageousness. Really, she thought with a sigh as she pulled it on, is this what they are wearing in Italy these days?

  Her dress was orange.

  Professor Randolph Lyall had been three nights and two days hunting with very little sleep. The only thing he’d gotten was a lead as to the whereabouts of Lord Akeldama’s stolen item, from a ghost agent in good standing assigned to tail the potentate—if one could use the word “tail” when referring to a vampire.

  Professor Lyall had sent Lord Maccon off to explore the lead further, arranging it so that the Alpha thought it was his own idea, of course.

  The Beta rubbed at his eyes and looked up from his desk. He wouldn’t be able to keep the earl in England much longer. He’d managed a series of investigative distractions and manipulations, but Alpha was Alpha, and Lord Maccon was restless knowing Alexia was out in the world being disappointed in him.

  Keeping the earl active meant that Professor Lyall was stuck with the stationary work. He checked every day after sunset for a possible aethograph from Lady Maccon and spent much of the rest of his time reading through the oldest of BUR’s records. He’d had them extracted with much tribulation from the deep stacks, needing six forms signed in triplicate, a box of Turkish delights to bribe the clerk, and a direct order from Lord Maccon. The accounts stretched back to when Queen Elizabeth first formed BUR, but he’d been scanning through them most of the night, and there were few references to preternaturals, even less about any female examples of such, and nothing at all about their progeny.

  He sighed and looked up, resting his eyes. Dawn was imminent, and if Lord Maccon didn’t arrive back presently, he’d be arriving back naked.

  The door to the office creaked open, as though activated by that thought, but the man who walked in wasn’t Lord Maccon. He was almost as big as the Woolsey Alpha and walked with the same air of self-assurance, but he was fully clothed and clearly in disguise. However, when Lyall sniffed the air, there was no doubt as to his identity—werewolves had an excellent sense of smell.

  “Good morning, Lord Slaughter. How do you do?”

  The Earl of Upper Slaughter—commander in chief of the Royal Lupine Guard, also known as Her Majesty’s Growlers; sometime field marshal; holder of a seat on Queen Victoria’s Shadow Council and most commonly known as the dewan—pushed his hood back and glared at Professor Lyall.

  “Not so loudly, little Beta. No need to broadcast my presence here.”

  “Ah, not an official visit, is it? You haven’t come to challenge for Woolsey, have you? Lord Maccon is currently out.” The dewan was one of the few werewolves in England who could give Lord Maccon a fight for his fur and had reputedly done so, over a game of bridge.

  “Why would I want to do a thing like that?”

  Professor Lyall gave an elegant little shrug.

  “The trouble with you pack types is you always assume us loners want what you’ve got.”

  “Tell that to the challengers.”

  “Yes, well, the last thing I need is the additional responsibility of a pack.” The dewan fussed with the hood about his neck, arranging it to suit his taste.

  The dewan was a man who had taken the curse later in life, resulting in a permanently jowly face, lined about the nose and mouth, with bags under the eyes. He sported a full head of dark hair, with a touch of gray at the temple, and fiercely bushy brows over deep-set eyes. He was handsome enough to have broken hearts in his day, but Lyall had always found the man’s mouth a little full and his mustache and muttonchops quite beyond the limits of acceptable bushiness.

  “To what, then, do I owe the honor of your visit at such an early hour?”

  “I have something for you, little Beta. It is a delicate matter, and it goes without saying that it cannot be known that I am involved.”

  “Oh, it does, does it?” But Lyall nodded.

  The werewolf pulled forth a rolled piece of metal from his cloak. Professor Lyall recognized it at once—a slate for the aethographic transmitter. He reached into his desk for a special little cranking device and used it to carefully unroll the metal. What was revealed was the fact that a message had been burned through—already transmitted. The note was short and to the point, each letter printed neatly in its segment of the grid, and, rather indiscreetly, it had been signed.

  “A vampire extermination mandate. Ordering a death bite on Lady Maccon’s neck. Amusing, considering she cannot be bitten, but I suppose it is the thought that counts.”

  “I understand it is just their turn of phrase.”

  “As you say. A death order is a death order, and it is signed by the potentate, no less.” Professor Lyall let out a deep sigh, placed the metal down with a tinny sound on the top of his desk, and pinched the bridge of his nose above his spectacles.

  “So you understand the nature of my difficulty?” The dewan looked equally resigned.

  “Was he acting under the authority of Queen Victoria?”

  “Oh, no, no. But he did use the Crown’s aethographor to send the order to Paris.”

  “How remarkably sloppy of him. And you caught him in the act?”

  “Let us say, I have a friend on the transmitter-operating team. He swapped out the slates so that our sender there destroyed the wrong one.”

  “Why bring it to BUR’s attention?”

  The dewan looked a little offended by the question. “I am not bringing it to BUR; I am bringing it to the Woolsey Pack. Lady Maccon, regardless of the gossip, is still married to a werewolf. And I am still the dewan. The vampires simply cannot be allowed to indiscriminately kill one of our own. It’s not on. Why, that is practically as bad as poaching clavigers and cannot be allowed, or all standards of supernatural decency will be lost.”

  “And it cannot be known that the information came from you, my lord?”

  “Well, I do have to still work with th
e man.”

  “Ah, yes, of course.” Professor Lyall was a tad surprised; it was rare for the dewan to involve himself in pack business. He and Lord Maccon had never exactly liked each other ever since that fateful game of bridge. Lord Maccon had, in fact, given up cards as a result.

  With his usual inappropriate timing, Lord Maccon returned from his jaunt at that very moment. He marched in, clad only in a cloak, which he removed in a sweeping motion and flung carelessly in the vicinity of a nearby hat stand, clearly intent on striding on to the small changing room to don his clothes.

  He stilled, naked, sniffing the air. “Oh, hello, Fluffy. What are you doing out of your Buckingham penitentiary?”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Professor Lyall, frustrated. “Do hush up, my lord.”

  “Lord Maccon, indecent as always, I see,” snapped the dewan, ignoring the earl’s pet name for him.

  Now, bound and determined to remain nude, the earl marched around Lyall’s desk to see what he was reading, as it clearly had some connection with the unexpected presence of the second most powerful werewolf in all of Britain.

  The dewan, showing considerable self-restraint, ignored Lord Maccon and continued his conversation with Professor Lyall as though the earl had not interrupted them. “I am under the impression the gentleman in question may have also managed to persuade the Westminster Hive to his line of thinking, or he would not have sent that order.”

  Professor Lyall frowned. “Ah, well, given—”

  “Official extermination mandate! On my wife!”

  One would think, after twenty-odd years, Professor Lyall would be used to his Alpha’s yelling, but he still winced when it was conducted with such vigor so close to his ear.

  “That lily-livered, bloodsucking sack of rotten meat! I shall drag his sorry carcass out at high noon—you see if I don’t!”

  The dewan and Professor Lyall continued their conversation as if Lord Maccon weren’t boiling over next to them like a particularly maltreated porridge.

  “Really, by rights, preternaturals,” Lyall spoke coldly, “are BUR’s jurisdiction.”

  The dewan tilted his head from side to side in mild agreement. “Yes, well, the fact remains that the vampires seem to think they have a right to take matters onto their own fangs. Clearly, so far as the potentate is concerned, what that woman is carrying is not preternatural and thus no longer BUR’s jurisdiction.”