The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle)

by Webb, Catherine

  Lyle smiled wanly and said, ‘I see. Please excuse me, gentlemen, but a roof collapsed on my head a few hours ago.’ Tess realized he was swaying gently, and saw fully for the first time the blood clinging to his hair, his skin, the burn on his hand, the bruising that seemed to be everywhere, the soot and the dirt and the scorched coat. She started up to help him, but Feng was there first, supporting Lyle under the elbow and guiding him on to a seat. He poured water from a jug and helped him drink; Tess saw how Lyle’s hand shook as he swallowed the water down.

  The silence was broken by Lincoln. ‘Are you well, Mister Lyle?’

  Six pairs of eyes gave Lord Lincoln the same look Napoleon had given his generals when asked if he really thought invading Russia had been a good idea. Lyle carefully put the cup to one side, took a deep, shaky breath, and said, ‘As well as can be expected, following an encounter with a man made of stone who controls the living stones and kills without qualm.’ He gave Lincoln a weary, crooked look. His voice was low and calm. ‘And, my lord, if you ever put me and the children in a position like that ever again, it won’t just be a brewery that blows up.’

  ‘You’ve blown up a brewery?’

  ‘Gravitational inevitability. Anyone who decides to put a combustible liquid at the bottom of a long drop is simply begging for gravity to take up the challenge and find something flammable to fall. I just happened to be in the vicinity.’

  ‘Good God. Is there anything else I ought to know about?’

  Tess and Thomas exchanged guilty looks. ‘Well . . . there was this window . . .’

  ‘Which window?’

  ‘It was quite a big window . . .’

  ‘But I accept full responsibility!’ added Thomas hastily.

  ‘Where was this window?’ snapped Lord Lincoln.

  ‘Erm . . . King’s Cross.’

  ‘What happened to it?’

  Tess thought about it. ‘Sort . . . of gravi . . . gravitat . . . what Mister Lyle said.’

  Lord Lincoln turned incredulous eyes on Lyle, who shrugged and said coldly, ‘Don’t look at me. I was busy being eaten by Great Russell Street.’

  ‘I see. There wasn’t, I imagine, a damage-light alternative to all these actions?’

  The silence that met the question could have been used to cut granite. Lord Lincoln sighed. ‘Well, that’s all useful to know.’

  ‘And what should we know about, my lord?’ There was ice in Lyle’s voice. It scratched against the iron of the room and made it shudder; it was the voice of a man who had seen Hell and been unimpressed. ‘What exactly don’t we know about?’

  ‘That is such a general question I hardly know where to . . .’

  ‘Tell me the truth about Lucan Sasso or I swear I’m going straight back out there, dancing a tap-dance on the roof of this place and singing “The Ballad of the Cheerful Shepherd” with a loud voice and a gleeful expression until half the city of London is knocking at this door with writs for damages and an inquisitive expression!’ Lyle hadn’t moved an inch, but his voice sent a shudder down Tess’s spine, and made Tate curl up on the floor. It took even Feng by surprise, who leant slightly away from Lyle and stared into his face, as if trying to work out whether this was the same man he had just helped to a seat.

  Lord Lincoln coughed politely, unfazed, and glanced at his companion. ‘Shall you tell it, xiansheng, or shall I?’

  The Chinese man nodded. ‘My lord,’ he said, ‘I think Mister Lyle’s over-developed sense of moral certainty won’t be appeased, unless he hears it from you.’

  And Lord Lincoln turned to Lyle, nodded once briskly, one professional man to another, and for possibly the first and last time in his life, told all.

  CHAPTER 21

  Sasso

  ‘What I know is fuzzy, distorted by the blur of myth, memory and bad reports. It is important that you know that, and understand that it, among other reasons, contributed to my earlier silence.

  ‘Lucan Sasso was, in his time, a remarkable man. Raised to the level of marquis from an inauspicious birth, in Italy, he was honoured for his skills and bravery in battle, and was accepted to be, though perhaps lacking in strategy, a noble warrior. For such, he was rewarded. He was a poet too, a man of culture and passion. He devoutly believed in the Roman Catholic Church, and on one occasion went to Rome to seek the personal blessing of the Pope. He also, however, had a weakness for women. At the time when he was still a young man, there was a lady in Europe, who moved from country to country without regard for the borders of nations. Some said she was an Austrian princess, some said she had come even from the realms of the Ottoman, some that she was a Spanish beauty raised in the south by Moors. As with all mysterious, beautiful women, the reports were naturally unreliable. What we do know is that her name was Selene.

  ‘Lucan Sasso met Selene in Rome, and was struck with her instantly; she, however, did not return his interest. She led him on while he followed her to Vienna, to Paris, protesting his love for her. Finally, here in London, she said she would accept him, and swear to him a secret love. Myth and rumour mingle, but the fables say in typically melodramatic style that somewhere in this city he spent seven days and seven nights with her, at the end of which she turned round and announced that she was leaving for ever, sailing somewhere across the seas, and they could never meet again. She left him a blade made of a special stone to remind him of her. He swore he would kill himself with it rather than be parted from her, but she was unmoved, and left that night. Surprisingly, for a man of Lucan Sasso’s reputation, he was as good as his word, and the same night, on Westminster Bridge, he stabbed himself through the heart with the stone blade.

  ‘As I suspect you have begun to surmise, it was a death with . . . complications. There are various doubtful but very colourful descriptions of his death: the earth shook, towers toppled, the bridge cracked, bells rang, the heavens opened, at the moment of death he could control the tides and so on. But what can be said for certain is that something . . . not entirely explicable by your science, Mister Lyle, took hold of Lucan Sasso. He is stone. His heart is an empty space under his skin; his skin is hard marble; his eyes do not dilate in bright light; the moonlight and the sunlight burn away the illusion of life that is half-real, half-imagined by all who see him, and reveal him for what he really is. We, all who look on such things, are very good at telling ourselves that they are not so but, in the brightest of lights, even we cannot deceive ourselves. Consequently, he hides from the daylight, has no power in it. Once he was beautiful, now he cannot bear to look on himself, or have others see anything but the hard, illusionary beauty that still clings to him. His blood is clay, and if you can cut through the hard stone of his skin, hardest most when seen for what it is, clay merely slips back in and heals the wound. A geologist once took a sample of this clay that Sasso bleeds, compared it with other minerals of the land, and finally declared that it was London clay, the clay that is taken from the riverbed, east of the city.

  ‘I can give no explanations; that is neither my concern nor my role. You have seen how he kills, how ruthless he is; how did you put it? “Without qualm.” He is heartless indeed. He has plagued cities, manipulated and twisted the stone they are made of; but this city has remained always a pull to him, his love and his hatred, as if some of it entered his blood when he died - for I firmly believe that Sasso is no longer alive nor human in the sense of the word.

  ‘Following his . . . transformation, he travelled across Europe, murdering, mostly women, although anyone who irritated him was a target, anyone who looked and saw. His victims were all of a type, resembling Selene, all beauties in their ways. It took a long time to find him, to catch him, cage him like the monster he has become. The Church took responsibility for him, put him away in Isalia, where he was studied and kept. He eats the stone, Lyle. He eats it to control it; they sealed him in a coffin of stone, strong enough to contain him, but of a mineral he had never tasted and could not control, and left him to weaken, to grow powerless, together with h
is own demented mind.’

  ‘They sealed him alive?’ Lyle’s voice was low.

  ‘Indeed so.’

  ‘For how long?’

  Lord Lincoln didn’t answer.

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Sixty-three years.’

  ‘And Ignatius Caryway let him out? Here?’

  ‘So it would appear. My agents were unable to prevent it.’

  Lyle shook his head. ‘My God,’ he whispered. ‘No wonder he’s mad.’ He looked up sharply. ‘All right, now the honest answers, because you have deceived me all the way and now we’re all going to pay the consequences. First, who are you?’ An accusing finger pointed at the quiet Chinese man sitting in the armchair.

  The man smiled. It was an unnerving smile, wide, bright, friendly and somehow shark-like. ‘I am Mr Lingdao, sir. I was invited here by his lordship because I and my people also have an interest in the activities of Mr Sasso.’

  ‘Who are your people?’

  Feng Darin cleared his throat and said, ‘We represent the interests of the Emperor overseas. His more . . . unlikely interests, shall we say?’

  ‘You were involved with the Tseiqin,’ snapped Lyle, not taking his eyes off the amused face of Mr Lingdao. ‘You came here to destroy the Fuyun Plate, the only thing that could give them power. But you weren’t working with Lord Lincoln then; why now?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Mr Lingdao. ‘If you consider, you will find our aims were the same. We both desired to prevent the Tseiqin achieving a power that was not rightfully theirs, and both realized that your kind co-operation was beneficial to this aim. Our methods were disparate, but we have never found any cause for disagreement, his lordship and ourselves.’

  ‘Is Lucan Sasso such a threat you would have Feng Darin trail me across London, again, and risk his life, again, in the shadows? ’

  ‘Not immediately a threat to the Emperor,’ replied Mr Lingdao, ‘but in this matter, Lord Lincoln requested our assistance. ’

  ‘Why? ’

  ‘Because,’ said Lord Lincoln mildly, ‘Mr Lingdao and his associates have the stone blade of Selene.’

  CHAPTER 22

  Darin

  Lyle stormed through the Great Exhibition, Tess, Thomas and Tate struggling to keep up with him, Feng Darin in flustered tow. ‘Horatio! You don’t know what you’re doing!’

  ‘I know exactly what I’m doing! I’m putting Tess and Thomas on the first train out of this damn city, going back to my lab and cooking up enough nitroglycerin to turn bloody Hampstead and its bloody occupants with their bloody good manners into a giant smoking crater!’

  There was a little ‘hurrah!’ from Tess, hastily muted.

  Feng Darin thrust himself in front of Lyle as they neared the door. ‘Listen to me! Listen!’

  Lyle stopped, an unimpressed look on his face. ‘Yes?’ he snapped.

  ‘If you go out there, it will be a matter of minutes before Lucan finds you. You heard what Lincoln said: that . . . creature . . . kills without compunction. He will feel your feet on the stones and hunt you down.’

  ‘Then we’ll bloody fly! It won’t take long to fix the plane. We’ll launch it from Greenwich in hours, if we have to.’ Lyle started forward, pushing past Feng Darin.

  ‘It’s not like you to run away, Lyle.’

  Lyle froze, hand on the door, then spun round and grabbed Feng by the collar, dragging him up with surprising strength. His eyes were burning, his hands shaking with anger and fatigue. ‘You listen to me. Lincoln thinks he’s won me, knows me, understands what pushes me into each new farce or danger, thinks he knows how to make me bend left or bend right. But you, you should know better.’

  He pushed the door open, hurried the children out into the cold, dim air, took a deep breath of it after the enclosure of the dome, looked up at the sky, and let out the long breath he hadn’t realized that he’d been holding. At his feet, Tate sniffed the air, his tail beginning to wag.

  ‘How will you survive the night?’ asked Feng quietly behind him.

  Lyle looked back, smiled an odd smile and said, ‘That is the wrong question, Feng Darin. The question should be: how will Sasso survive the day?’

  And across London, the bells began to ring, declaring the hour, singing their brief songs to anyone who would listen, who would care that the city was alive, coming alive, had always been alive, buzzing with sound and noise day after day, the inhabitants making up a whole so huge, each part had to tick away in harmony with another part which ticked with another and another so that for just one part to bend and break would change the rhythm of the city, a thousand thousand lives living together by a single beat, the heartbeat of the city, the living city, and the bells rang out and proclaimed the hour, and Lyle turned and looked towards the east and saw, glimmering over the docks of Rotherhithe and the grasses of Greenwich and the ships of Westferry, the first, seductive trace of daylight, burning through the fog.

  Dawn across London. The dim grey light crawls through the glass of the Great Exhibition, turning the blackness of the night to a tantalizing warm orange glow as the glass bends the light, its impurities shining as thin shadows across the floor, making a mystic map to another land in the play of light.

  In the darkness, shut away from the dawn, sit Lord Lincoln and Mr Lingdao.

  ‘Will Sasso wait again until nightfall?’

  ‘Yes. And now Lyle knows. I suspect Sasso will want to know more of our Mister Lyle. I suspect Lyle will solve our problem, without our . . . mutual interest . . . being endangered.’

  And in the darkness, Lord Lincoln smiles, and feels, just for a moment, confident, ready to face the world, the city, the stones. A tune drifts into his mind, into the empty space shaped by the city that made him, into the place where the heartbeat of his home keeps a steady time dictated by the winding alleys and rippling waters of the city, and he purses his lips, and hums quietly, ‘“Oranges and lemons . . .”’ And stops, surprised, and tuts quietly to himself, shaking his head to free it of the tune, and returns to thinking about more important matters, while outside, the bells ring on.

  And in another darkness, hiding from the sun, a door opens, and something is pushed into black gloom, thick and cold and stultifying. And a frightened voice, used to speaking English, but not as it is spoken in England, says, ‘Who’s there? What’s happening? ’

  ‘Priest. You thought to tame me. You gave me the stones, to feed on their power, their age. I fed. I grew powerful. You had a vision, a dream; you wanted to change this city. I said I shared the dream, to feed on the power. But my dream is purer, simpler, the stillness that waits inside. This city will tremble and die, the blackness you feared will tremble and die.’

  And Ignatius Caryway whispers, ‘I made you! I brought you here, it was a mission appointed by God, I am the vessel of Our Lord, I am the Way, I am the . . .’

  ‘The sun shines on the city, priest. It is painful to me. It shows me what I am. I prefer to be seen for what I was. You have until nightfall, then, to live.’

  ‘And the Lord sayeth, “I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt have no . . .”’ Voice trembling, terror in every word, a salvation that isn’t forthcoming.

  ‘The scientist, Horatio Lyle, he scurries home through the daylight, knowing that I feel his footsteps as if he walked on my grave. He has something I want: a black stone blade. Bring it to me.’

  Fatigue had caught up with Thomas and Tess, springing on them as they passed through the streets of London. Somehow, though neither of them understood how, the day brought safety and, for the moment, everything was all right. Relief at the incredibility of still being alive had begun to mingle with the realization of what they had achieved, and each mind slipped in and out of the closed doors of sleep.

  ‘Are you sure it is wise to go back to your home?’ asked Feng Darin quietly as they each carried a child in their arms up to the doors of Lyle’s house.

  ‘Nowhere is safe,’ replied Lyle. ‘But daylight is as frightening to some
people as the night is to us.’ He stared into Feng Darin’s dark brown eyes and his worn, openly foreign features, exposed now in the sunlight. ‘It shows some of us, who would rather not be reminded, what we really are, inside.’

  Feng met Lyle’s eyes for a second, then followed him uncomplaining through the door.

  Seven a.m. in London, and Thomas lies asleep and dreams of flying through the sky, of the world below being all his, of being freer than the ship on the sea or the rider on the horse, dreams of escaping it all, dreams of making a dream come true, and smiles in his sleep, and rolls over, to sleep and dream again.

  Seven a.m. in London, and Lyle sits quietly by Tess’s bed as she rolls over in her sleep, shivering in half-real, half-dreamt winter’s cold, kicking unconsciously at her blanket. Lyle pulls it back over her feet and, for a reason he can’t quite explain, sings softly under his breath, with no particular tune or sense of time, ‘Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry . . .’

  And Tess sleeps the peaceful dream of safety in daylight, and dreams that, somewhere, in the shadows, a vague shape sings a song to her, as no shape ever did when she was awake to hear. ‘Blacks and greys, dapples and bays, coach and six of little horses . . .’

  And she smiles, and dreams of a dream come true, and rolls over, to sleep and dream again.

  ‘Tell me about the blade, Feng Darin.’

  Feng reached into his coat and pulled out, wrapped neatly in black silk, a long, slim black object. He laid it with some reverence on the table and gently unwrapped it. It was plain, unadorned, and also, Lyle noticed with some surprise, very light to handle, smooth and slightly warm to the touch. It was definitely stone; no metal felt as the blade did, but it had been carved down to a point that was sharp to the touch, and had a deadly gleam at its curved end that looked as if it had tasted more than its share of blood.

  ‘This is Selene’s blade,’ said Feng. ‘Stolen from Sasso while he slept. He treasured it above all things. It is said that a man who drives it through his own heart and longs to die will not die. That it does not kill the man, merely the heart, and that where the heart was, there is an emptiness, waiting to be filled. Do you recognize its material?’