The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle)

by Webb, Catherine

  Lyle glared at her. ‘Teresa, do you see this expression of firm-eyed will and determination?’

  Tess peered up at him. ‘You mean the kinda slitty-eyed one?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘The one what has the kinda wrinkle at the end of your nose and makes your ears seem funny?’

  ‘That sounds very likely.’

  ‘I’m seein’ it.’

  ‘It means you’re on the first train out of this city.’

  ‘Ain’t.’

  ‘Are.’

  ‘Ain’t.’

  ‘Are.’

  ‘Ain’t.’

  ‘Ain . . . Are, dammit, Teresa!’

  Thomas’s voice, dry and dusty, cut in. ‘Mister Lyle?’ he croaked. ‘We can help you.’

  Lyle scowled. ‘I’m not having children’s blood on my hands!’ he snapped. ‘Dust and nitroglycerin, but not children’s blood!’

  ‘Mister Lyle,’ said Tess, ‘you ain’t got enough hands to stop us. You need us.’

  For a second, fury leapt up behind Lyle’s eyes, and he flushed an angry red. He looked from Tess to Thomas to Feng and back again. Several times he opened his mouth to speak, saw their expressions, and changed his mind again. Finally he let out a furious hiss and, turning to Feng, snapped, ‘You.’

  Feng raised his eyebrows politely.

  ‘Get me all the ammonia you can find. And Tess?’

  ‘Yes, Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Get me the spare wheel from the basement, and get up to Greenwich Hill. If you stay, you stay above the stones, all right?’

  ‘Yes, Mister Lyle.’

  CHAPTER 24

  Bridge

  To Tate, who watched from the security of his basket in the kitchen, the day went quickly.

  He was woken early by an unusual buzzing sound from upstairs and a lot of shouting, but decided it wasn’t worth investigation. He opened another torpid eye a little later when Lyle, covered in dust and looking very, very angry, exploded into the kitchen. A little strategic whining distracted Lyle long enough for food to be provided, before he stormed out again, carrying an armful of saucepans and some very thick gloves.

  A little later, Thomas, also covered head to toe in dust, entered the kitchen, carrying a bundle of foul-smelling rags which he began to soak in lamp oil. Tate whined at Thomas, and was promptly fed.

  Tess was the next to come in, wearing an alarmed expression and carrying one of the saucepans that Lyle had earlier taken away, only now it smelt sickly, a mixture of alcohol and the kind of chemicals Tate associated with large scorch marks and dirty smoke. Tess washed it in the sink, with frozen water and the care of someone who’s just been given a grenade instead of a cricket ball and told to ‘go play’. Tate turned his attentions to Tess, who in leaving, fed him.

  It was turning into a good day.

  The afternoon brought new and interesting odours from outside the kitchen, but they were that class of smell which Tate knew well enough to avoid, and which put him in mind of a hairless mouse with a scorched tail. He had a brief bout of exercise chasing his own tail, before Feng Darin walked in carrying a handful of test tubes, into which he poured a lot of sugar. Tate tried whining at him, saw Feng’s expression, and quickly went to hide under his blanket. When Feng was gone, Tate climbed up on to the table and helped himself to some of the food Lyle had forgotten to tidy away. Though it was technically against Tate’s policy to go out of his way to feed himself, desperate times did call for desperate measures.

  Evening brought all four of them back. Tate whined at Tess, who gave him a biscuit. Dissatisfied with his prize, he whined again at Lyle, who muttered guiltily, ‘We have been neglecting you, haven’t we? You can’t have eaten since breakfast . . .’ and promptly fed him.

  After dinner, Tate watched Tess and Thomas get into one hansom cab, Feng get into another and Lyle linger in the hall, uneasily waving goodbye. He was surprised at the way Thomas and Tess ran back and hugged Lyle in a rare show of affection. In Tate’s mind this suggested either deep concern on their part, or a mind-controlling experiment on the two hapless children, which would, Tate reasoned, go some way to explaining the smells that had been drifting out of the basement all day.

  He regarded his master carefully, as Lyle waved goodbye. The odours coming off Lyle’s battered overalls were almost too thick and noxious to separate one from another, but Tate smelt evidence of ammonia, salt, sugar, carbon, soot, ammonium, various magnesium compounds, clay for some reason, maybe a dab of silver nitrate, a few iron oxides here or there, some of the foul electrolytes Lyle liked using when extracting elements from compounds in order to acquire certain otherwise unobtainable products, and, through it all, something that combined in many ways the worst of the smells and might, indeed, explain why Lyle was moving so cautiously, with one hand firmly over his left coat pocket, to stop its contents from moving about too much.

  Tate reached the obvious conclusion.

  It was terrifying.

  Later. The kind of later that might be the last later ever recorded, or might just be the first of many, many laters yet to come.

  Midnight in winter. No traffic crosses Westminster Bridge tonight, which is hardly unusual, considering the lateness of the hour, the depth of snow, the steadily falling white flakes which drive even the toughest horses back to the stable, their metal bits too cold to bite on. The gas lights burn dully on the freshly painted bridge, trying in vain to force their beams just that little bit further into the darkness.

  Alone on Westminster Bridge, pacing under a lamp, and flapping his arms against the cold, Horatio Lyle thinks: It is said that there are forces beyond any mere man’s control. Some call it magic, some call it God, some call it luck, some call it fate. They give the random empty things names, and then fear them. How silly.

  And Horatio Lyle looks down across the silver of the frozen river, snaking west past the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, past the wharves and docks and barges and ships trapped upright or at odd angles in the ice, out towards the edges of the city, burning gaseous yellow and snowy silver. And Horatio Lyle looks down across the silver of the frozen river, winding east past Charing Cross and the giant mansions of the Embankment, great government buildings and huge terraces for the wealthy and the indulged, past the piers and frozen walls of the river, past the burning chimneys belching their smoke into the sky, past the moving lights of the bridges where men carrying lanterns wind their way through the fog, towards the torches that burn among the stones of the Tower and around the city wall, as it runs rings through the heart of the city: here a Roman piece of masonry, here medieval, here Tudor, sometimes forming parts of buildings incorporating the ancient wall into themselves, sometimes snaking through the buildings or stopping on a street corner, to resume on the other side where the old gates had stood on the bridges or at the edge of the city, now sprawling beyond the old limits; torches burning with a million lives and a million fires that over the centuries have tried to eat up the fog and drive back the darkness . . .

  Horatio Lyle looked across at London, and smiled. Just now, just for this instant, so inexpressible, everything was . . . perfect.

  ‘You have my blade?’

  Lyle jumped, the voice right behind him, and instantly remembered the feel of a hand round his throat and the sensation that the earth was trying to swallow him whole. He backed away hastily a few steps from the shape of Sasso, half-visible in the fog. ‘I brought the blade,’ he stammered, trying to get control of his heart, which had suddenly decided it wanted to be somewhere else, quickly.

  Sasso looked different. The mad gleam was gone; now there was just steely determination. In many ways, that was worse. ‘Then give it to me.’

  Lyle hesitated. Instantly Sasso advanced a step, and the bridge seemed to lurch with him.

  ‘You’ll leave us alone?’ Lyle’s voice was barely above a whisper. ‘You’ll not hurt anyone?’

  ‘Do not presume to judge me! You cannot imagine the things I have seen,
the things I have done. You cannot imagine how it . . . how it feels only to remember feeling. To know that here should be joy and here should be happiness and remember the pull of your features as each emotion swept through you, but be deprived of the heart that should most relish them! Do not dare to judge me, little man!’

  Lyle heard a little clinking sound behind him, and half-turned to see the two gargoyles, clinging to the rail of the bridge with long claws, leering brightly at him.

  ‘Well, yes . . . right,’ he muttered, reaching into his coat. He pulled out a long object, wrapped in cloth and, handling it as if it might explode at any second, held it out to Sasso.

  Eagerness flaring on his face, he grabbed the blade from Lyle’s hands, dragged the cloth away and held it up, turning it this way and that, his face twisting into a smile. ‘Selene’s blade,’ he murmured. ‘Her gift, her power, to me.’

  Lyle backed away, hoping no one would notice, as Lucan Sasso held the blade up to the light.

  ‘You make me a god, little man.’

  ‘Well, I . . .’ Something cold and hard closed over the back of Lyle’s neck, holding with an unshakeable grip, dragging his head back so that all he could see was the fog where stars should be, and the gently falling snow stung his eyes. The hand was cold as the night air, but was definitely a human hand, four fingers pressing deep into the left side of his neck, a thumb forming a tight loop that dug into his vein. He thought, Someone with a left hand?

  And then there was the voice, like marble warmed in the sun, and the hand was like marble, the left hand that had a grip no mere mortal should have possessed, the left hand . . .

  And Lyle felt just a bit foolish for not working it out sooner.

  ‘Lucan,’ hummed the voice. ‘Do not do that.’

  Lucan Sasso froze, and stared in horror and surprise at whatever stood behind Lyle, the hand that held the knife dropping slowly to his side. His mouth moved as he tried to form words, although none came.

  ‘The knife is not real,’ continued the warm-marble voice in Lyle’s ear. No breath, he noticed, no warm air touching his ear, though the lips that moved were right beside him, and seemed to have a coldness all of their own. ‘Lyle had it made during the day, out of plaster. I am disappointed that you cannot tell. The real blade hums with power.’

  The hunger in that word made Lyle sick, made his stomach churn. The grip tightened on his neck, became painful, dragged his head back so that for a moment, out of the corner of his eyes, he saw marble-white skin, basalt-black hair, granite-grey eyes and a smile that could have conquered the world. ‘What did you do with the real blade, Lyle?’ whispered the voice in his ear.

  He didn’t answer. The grip became more insistent, with a sudden rushing in Lyle’s ears and a hammering in his head which suggested that if it was any more insistent, it would be terminal.

  ‘Hidden!’ he gasped.

  ‘And this false blade? I imagine you’ve done something cunning with it.’

  ‘Hollow!’

  ‘And what’s in the centre?’

  Lyle saw Sasso looming over him, face still set with wonder and surprise. He hissed, ‘I think, Lady Lumire, we’re about to find out.’

  And Lady Diane Lumire, her marble hand clamped round Lyle’s neck, looked past him and down at the blade in Sasso’s hand and he, rapt, followed her gaze and noticed the little drip that seeped through the very top of the blade, the tiny shimmer of clear liquid that fell in a steady, silent splash on to the snow. And, because Lucan Sasso hadn’t had a chance to catch up with the modern technological revolution and didn’t really understand these things, he stood back in surprise, and dropped the blade.

  If he’d bothered to ask Lyle, he would have known that dropping anything containing nitroglycerin was the last thing a sensible man would do.

  CHAPTER 25

  Selene

  The explosion shakes Westminster Bridge. It sends the pigeons starting for the air, rattles snow off buildings, hums through the ice of the river and, for just a brief second, burns away the fog that shrouds the centre of the empty bridge.

  Somewhere, not too far away, Feng Darin looks up from loading his revolver, sees the flash, looks down at the ice of the river, and hears something stomp very quietly in the night. He feels for the weight of Selene’s blade, at his side.

  It is said that fortune favours the brave. Horatio Lyle, as the world filled with fireworks, smoke, noise and confusion, was of the increasing opinion that not only was this statement wrong, it was possibly spread by malignant people hoping to prove by elimination that cowardice was the more favourable Darwinian characteristic.

  As the blade hit the ground, Lyle threw himself back, which worked fine, for Lady Diane Lumire clearly had a stronger grasp of science than Sasso, and was also diving for cover, Lyle utterly forgotten. He hit the cobbles and curled up, head tucked in deep below his shoulders as, behind him, the world filled with fire and flying stone. He felt the heat of the blast singe the back of his neck, turn the soles of his shoes slightly soft, scorch his coat, and instantaneously vaporize several gallons of snow so that it hissed and stung his eyes as it rushed out from the centre of the blast. He felt his ears go pop.

  He opened his eyes. Loose bits of stone fell around him. He touched one. It was almost searing to the touch. He staggered upright. Sound was odd, out of place. He felt as if he was hearing the world through water. Light seemed a little bit too bright. Something was ringing in his head. He looked down at the ground. There was no sign of Sasso. He looked towards Diane. Where she had fallen, the stones were bent oddly, rising up above the normal level of the bridge to form a cocoon shape, large and long. They appeared to have blended, forming a smooth, almost uninterrupted slab. Lyle edged towards it. He prodded it with the tip of his toe; it felt solid enough. He bent down and touched it. The stones were warm to the touch. He moved away again, trying to work things out. Perhaps if . . .

  He saw something move. The stones seemed to ripple. He backed away faster, until he bumped against the parapet. The stones bent, twisting, then rising up abruptly and melting together, until they formed the irate shape of Lucan Sasso, standing tall as ever. At his feet, where she had been covered by the cocoon of masonry, Diane Lumire sat up, looking only slightly flummoxed. The pair of them turned to Lyle with an ice-hard stare.

  ‘Ah,’ muttered Lyle. ‘Well . . . it seemed a good idea at the time.’

  Diane was back on her feet. Sasso half-turned to her, looking for guidance. She smiled at him, then smiled a wider but no less cruel smile in the direction of the baffled scientist. ‘Mister Lyle,’ she murmured, ‘you die faster than we do.’

  Lyle thought about this. He considered all the possibilities at his disposal, all the ideas and plans that might yet save him, and settled on the most rational one. He turned, and ran. It was something he was getting quite good at.

  Feng Darin remembered a different time. It was vague, the colours dimmed and the sounds muffled, details fading as time and experience plastered different, fresher memories over the walls of his mind. He remembered cold winters and cold summers, riding across endless steppes in search of water and food, of smoky yurts made of goat skins and twigs, of cowering away from the snow in giant, smelly furs sewn crudely together by the old lady of the tribe, who felt her way from stitch to stitch with hands so worn you could almost see each individual bone in the hand as the skin moved across it.

  The memory was distant now. He remembered the Emperor’s men coming, remembered first seeing the steel ships being built in the docks, first seeing the sea, first seeing the smoke of London. He had an image of hell in his mind, but no imagination acquired in the mountains could have prepared him for the hell that he saw in reality, as he stepped into the wharves of London. He remembered the looks he would get, a strange man in a strange country, as the people of London looked at his dark skin and scurried away nervously, not used to seeing a Chinese man, and whispering to their children not to speak to him.

  He remembere
d the day Tess had turned to him and said, ‘Oi. You a chink, ain’t you?’ And she hadn’t cared. Just shrugged it off, and gone about her larcenous business. He’d been afraid of daylight, until that moment. He’d feared that it showed him for who he was.

  Feng Darin looked at the darkness and the fog, smelt the smoke and tasted the ice on the air. Under his feet, Charing Cross Bridge shuddered ever so slightly. He heard the hiss of a train, the burp of a machine, the click of metal on metal, the stamp of a horse’s hoof. And just behind it, very quietly, someone muttering, ‘Shush.’

  For a moment, just a moment, Feng Darin smiled, which was a rare thing indeed, and drew his blade. He knew what would have to be done and that, too, was cold.

  Lyle swung round the corner of the bridge just as something heavy and dark swept over his head, and threw himself down the icy steps at the end, towards the frozen river below. The stones of the Embankment seemed to be coming alive, faces leering up and out of the masonry along the side of the river, bending like a liquid to watch him pass, rippling under his feet. He heard the beat of very, very heavy wings on the air and didn’t even bother to duck, but threw himself headlong off the stairs, feet slipping on the ice, to land heavily in a snowdrift built up in the hull of a trapped fishing boat. The wharves which lined the river were covered over with inches of ice and snow. Through the fog Lyle saw the phantasmal shapes of ships rising out of the ice, locked in place, forming a small city of streets and alleys. He looked up and saw on the bridge, staring down at him impassively, Sasso, arms raised as if trying to hold the air itself in his palms, on his face an expression which could only be called stony. Around him, gargoyles and griffins and the cherubs off the churches, some large and some no longer than Lyle’s arm, swarmed with the biting, hissing sound of aerodynamic practicalities being recklessly suspended. He looked back at the stairs leading down to the ice and saw Lady Diane at the top, a stone cat prowling round her feet. Turning, he saw behind him a pair of stone angels, stone swords raised, and felt sick.