The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle)

by Webb, Catherine

  Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,

  The beggars are coming to town.

  Some in rags and some in tags,

  And one in a velvet gown.

  Because now, just for tonight, Feng Darin was beginning to understand.

  And in the throng, for a moment, just a moment, Lyle saw her, and she saw him, and perhaps it was just the darkness and the illusions that fire and fog created, but something in his face made her start, and something in his eyes made her hesitate, and for a moment, the utter certainty of a mistress mastering the situation flickered, faltered.

  Then she swept away again and a wall of gargoyles swept with her, forming a tight protective knot. But Lyle didn’t care, ran after her, raising in his hands a whole array of tubes and bottles and needles and glass baubles and hurling them blindly at anything that got in his way. He charged after Diane Lumire, knowing that she was the one who had made Sasso, made him stone, made him evil, brought him here, broken necks with a twist of her wrist and now she was going to destroy his city. He wasn’t operating on an intellectual level now; for almost the first time since the baby Lyle had opened his eyes, he was running on instinct, which felt the air move behind him and heard the ice crunch around him and felt the waters rise beneath his feet and kept him moving until he was suddenly ducking under a frantic horse that was trying to rear up from the cracks in the ice that were spreading under its hooves, and out on to the open, dark ice, in front of her.

  He hurled the first tube of acid at her that came to hand: an angel stepped forward, without a moment’s hesitation, and the glass shattered off its front. Lyle thought he saw, behind its empty eyes, an altogether different intelligence, watching him with single-minded menace. He ignored the feeling and kept running, but now the ice underfoot was wobbling and bending, gargoyles leaping inelegantly from slab to slab as the cracks spread across it, worming their way from bank to bank. He half-heard the screams of horses and the clatter of steel as the soldiers struggled to stay either on their mounts or even on their feet. The world was suddenly a thousand little, toppling worlds, each one balancing slippery on the dark water of the Thames, which had decided that today it would like to breathe the air after all, thank you very much, and was trying to crawl its way back up over the ice, reclaiming its territory.

  Lyle hopped from slab to slab, sometimes wrongly estimating the jump and landing on an edge, which wobbled and tried to tip him off. A gargoyle lunged at him, but the ice on which it stood simply tipped underneath it, toppling the gargoyle forward, so its claws sailed past Lyle’s head and its feet slid out on the ice, talons embedded and screeching like fingers across a blackboard as it slipped down into the cold water. The cavalry were retreating, climbing or swimming or running or riding away from the shattered ice and trying to control their terrified horses, in a confused circle towards Westminster, still firing at the gargoyles. These, rather than risk walking across the ice, were clinging to the walls of the Embankment, swarming across it like fleas to moisture, forming a long, tight circle round the straggling survivors, and then spreading out once more, scattering towards the shadows on Charing Cross Bridge.

  Lyle looked and saw her again, Selene, Lumire, the One Who Did It All. She was heading towards the edge of the river, where the ice was thicker, as casually and daintily as if attending a ball. He ran after her, hurling chemical death at anything that got in his way.

  Overhead in Icarus, Tess looked down and saw the black mass of stone figures swarming around the confused cavalry, forming a tighter and tighter circle, briefly illuminated by each new flash of rifle fire as the riders circled, confused, hemmed in on all sides. At their backs the ice was shattered and bobbing, mere white specks now on the rising black waters of the Thames.

  Tess looked down, and saw, all along the Embankment, more men, desperately trying to work out how steel and lead are meant to break stone, swarming through the narrow streets between Westminster and Charing Cross Bridges, and thought, in a quiet little voice, the voice that she knew would be hers, when all the childish things were gone, London’s burning, London’s burning . . .

  And, without warning, there was nothing but darkness and ice between Lyle and Selene. He looked in astonishment at the shattered stone around him, at the broken glass and thick, smelly smoke from a thousand unfortunate chemical combinations now regretting their acquaintance, even as, on Westminster Bridge, Lucan Sasso looked down and saw his love, the woman who made him, the only woman who’d ever rejected him, the woman who was his heart and soul and mind, standing alone, and tried to bend the stones round her, to protect her, dragging the stones across the ice, but Lucan Sasso sees . . . he sees . . . the cobbles of Hampstead, the walls of Hackney, the alleys of Shoreditch, the Thames bridges, the streets of Mayfair, the spires of Holborn, the chimneys of Finsbury, the courts of Westminster, and he sees London, stretching out through time and space, a thousand years of stones and lives, so many lives, so many stones, trying to drag him here or here, saying, I was once walked on by Sir Christopher Wren or The blood of kings fell on my cobbles or Here we were bought or Here we were sold or Here died and here lived and here was born and here perished and here fought and here won and here lost; and though his love needed him and stood alone on the ice, though the stones were his to command, Lucan Sasso couldn’t get the city out of his head!

  And here now is the city, in Lucan Sasso’s head.

  ‘Oranges and lemons,’ say the bells of St Clement’s.

  ‘You owe me five farthings,’ say the bells of St Martin’s.

  ‘When will you pay me?’ say the bells of Old Bailey.

  ‘When I grow rich,’ say the bells of Shoreditch.

  ‘When will that be?’ say the bells of Stepney.

  ‘I do not know,’ say the great bells of Bow.

  Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

  Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

  Chip chop chip, the last man’s dead.

  And for a moment, as the world runs out of control, Lucan Sasso finally understands.

  CHAPTER 27

  River

  Diane stood by the walls of the Embankment, head tilted on one side as Lyle approached out of the fog. He stopped a few paces away, looking suspiciously around, eyes narrowed, while from everywhere the cacophony of battle was oddly distant, muffled in the fog, directions lost. Seeing his face, she smiled faintly.

  ‘You think you can really harm me? Do you know me, Horatio Lyle? Do you know my reputation? What I am?’

  ‘God help us, I do. This - is all you?’

  ‘Flattery, but I accept it. I am Selene. I make the world what I want it to be. I am very patient.’

  ‘You’re a mad bagcase, pardon the technical jargon.’

  Lyle looked up at Westminster Bridge, and saw the shadow of Lucan Sasso, standing utterly still, eyes closed, hands over his ears, as if trying to drown out a furious voice that was raging inside his head. He shrugged. ‘At the moment . . . I’m cautiously optimistic, Lady Selene.’

  She smiled. ‘But you don’t have a weapon.’

  Lyle looked down at his hands. He held one hypodermic, just a few drops of acid clinging to the needle, like ice crystals to a cold window. He didn’t need to feel his pockets to know they were empty. He looked up again, a half-hearted smile on his face, and risked another lopsided shrug. ‘I might have . . . a plan.’

  Selene began walking towards him, picking her way carefully across the ice, steering her way without bothering to glance down. ‘I have lived many, many years, Horatio Lyle, if you can regard this existence as living. I have felt nothing, tasted nothing, heard no music that pleased me nor felt anything but lingering cold, even in the sun. The technological revolution seems to be . . . rather dull. It certainly doesn’t offer the power that is all I crave. In fact, it seems to me to be rather typical of the men who made it, that they will fight their way through ice and death to reach an end, and when they get there . . .’ She stopped, within arm’s reach of Lyle. He ha
d never realized how intimidating fog made people. ‘. . . they never seem to find what they’re looking for. I was Tseiqin. I ruled the hearts of men. Now I am stone. I rule the heart of stone. It is a death perpetual, and a gift you will not understand.’

  Lyle slashed out at her with the needle. She flung her arm up, and to his surprise, the needle drew a line through her sleeve and across the marble-white skin underneath. She grabbed his wrist with her other arm, wrenching it back on itself until his fingers turned blue, her face suddenly made ugly with hatred and pain. Lyle clung desperately on to the needle as the only thing left in his possession. As Selene twisted with a strength he hadn’t realized could be created outside a hydraulic system, he saw something staining her arm, where the needle had slashed it. It wasn’t dark enough in this light to be blood, nor did it run like water, but rather rose up in the cut across her arm in a slow pool, that clung to the cut like an old scab, and began to dry and change colour almost immediately.

  Selene saw his eyes widen in horror and hissed in his ear, ‘My blood is clay, the clay of this city, Lyle, that made this city. My heart is stone, my blood is clay, but my mind . . . my mind is very much my own.’

  Lyle heard his knees creak and felt them bend, then fell on to the ice while she still clung to his wrist. He looked down, saw a hole in the ice and black water lapping hungrily inside it, and felt anger rise up, overwhelming fear. Somewhere, on the edge of instinct, where the mind couldn’t function for fear of getting entangled in less practical matters, he felt the air move overhead.

  ‘You killed an old woman and a beggar,’ he gasped.

  Selene shrugged. ‘Life’s a short business anyway. They’d already lived theirs.’

  She pushed him face-down towards the water, one hand on the back of his neck, until his nose touched the shockingly cold, black surface. A shudder raced down his spine. He tried to breathe deeply, take as much air as he could, but the more he concentrated on breathing, the faster and shallower it became.

  Somewhere, on the edge of instinct, where science was always a little bit too practical to venture, he heard the air move, and a voice shout: ‘Oi! That’s my gov’nor you’re drownin’!’

  And as Selene looked up in a moment of surprise and horror, Lyle drew one breath that pushed at his lungs and made him feel he was about to explode, and threw himself, head first, into the black waters below.

  Tess saw Lyle slip under the waters even as Selene raised her head in astonishment to look at Icarus. She screamed in fury and threw one of the still-hot tubes at Selene. But a gargoyle leapt out of the darkness below and knocked Selene aside, taking the full force of the hissing contraption in her place. As Thomas pulled at the levers, Icarus began sailing upwards again, the world below slowing to a luxurious spin as the machine fought for height. Tess saw the black pool where Lyle had vanished, the water lying still in the firelight, and screamed at Thomas, ‘We’ve gotta go down!’

  ‘What?’ Thomas’s voice was snatched away by the wind, the faintest shrill cry on the air.

  ‘We’ve gotta go down! We’ve gotta help Mister Lyle!’

  Tess leant over the side, leaning out until her fingertips barely clung to the edge, eyes fixed on the black waters, and saw that Selene too was looking at the black pool, standing with hands folded neatly in front of her, almost as if at prayer, studying the depths. Tess tried to count the seconds, but seconds were breaths, and then heartbeats, and then the pounding of her head, and then the rhythm of another tube as it burnt out in a gentle phutphut, and still she saw nothing, just a blackness below that wouldn’t break. She knew that somewhere the soldiers were pushing back at the stone army along the Embankment, that somewhere a cannon had fired, that somewhere below, the world was burning, that it was all ending, the city, the battle, the flight, the night, the dark, the fog, the ice, and still the darkness didn’t break.

  ‘Mister Lyle!’ she screamed down at the ice, praying for an answer, that it was just a trick. And below, Feng Darin, dragging death behind him as he spun across Westminster Bridge, was woken from his trance as the voice, full of pain and despair, shrilled across the ice, shook the stones, sank into them, another part of London’s history, the time the child screamed above the fire and the ice of a battle being won and lost, through the city where the blood of kings fell on the cobbles which here were bought or here were sold or here died and here lived and here was born and here perished, around a shattered river.

  And below, next to the still water surrounded by ice, Lady Diane Lumire looked up at Icarus, hearing the child’s scream, and smiled. Tess recognized the smile for the cruellest thing she had ever seen, remorseless, without even a cause to justify it beyond selfish personal gain. At least when in the past she’d met villains, they’d bothered to explain why they were villains.

  Selene just didn’t care, and would never, ever understand.

  Behind her, near the stairs up to the bridge, the ice exploded, outwards, upwards, as Lyle broke back to the surface.

  Feng Darin could almost see his target, Lucan Sasso, standing in the middle of the bridge. But there was now a wall between him and it, stones rising up from the bridge itself to try and stop his advance, and on every side the enemy kept flocking in, scratching and tearing and punching, so that even when he could finally see his foe, he still couldn’t reach him!

  Down on the river, Selene turned and saw Horatio Lyle pull himself up towards the bridge by the stairs, the water already starting to solidify as it poured off him, tiny icicles clinging to his coat. He crawled upwards, one hand still clinging to the hypodermic. With a hiss of frustration, Selene strode after him. Lyle reached the top of the steps as Selene’s hand closed round his ankle, dragging him bodily off the stairs and down on to the ice. He fell the five feet hard, on one side, landing with a crunch and a crackle of the ice embedded in his clothes and clinging to his hair, turning it white. Selene leant down, one hand closing round his throat.

  There was a sound like a falling brick shattering soft wood. With a surprised expression, Selene looked down, and then, thoughtfully, pulled the needle out of her upper leg, dragging the plunger back up. A few drops of dirty Thames water still clung to the side of the hypodermic’s glass. She turned her gaze on Lyle. ‘But you didn’t have anything in it,’ she protested.

  ‘I took the opportunity of filling it with water while trying to find a way out from under the ice.’ Lyle’s voice was half breathless wheeze, half chattering teeth.

  ‘But . . .’ Selene staggered back an uncertain pace from Lyle, one hand going up to her heart, fingers tightening as if in pain. ‘But . . . I feel . . . water?’

  Lyle crawled away from her, clinging to the icy stones of the stairs. Selene leant suddenly against the Embankment wall, eyes wide, face white, fingers opening, then closing into a tight fist. She bent, curling up around the point where the needle had gone in, as if in great pain.

  ‘Water?’

  ‘It . . .’ Lyle’s voice was almost non-existent, his eyes wide and frightened, reality slowly kicking back in and instincts sliding away into their box for another day. ‘It expands when frozen. You are very cold, my lady.’

  And, as water turned to ice inside her, Selene clutched at the pain in her heart where she hadn’t realized she had a heart, and as what little life she had to call her own stopped, Lady Diane Lumire thought she heard - through the closing down of her senses which blocked out all sounds but the ever-unheard hum of the city, the sound that most are too well used to hearing to really notice or care about any more - she heard the city, and perhaps even she finally understood.

  She slipped, still and heavy, on to the ice.

  And Lucan Sasso screamed.

  CHAPTER 28

  Perfection

  Lyle heard the scream, but didn’t register it. Cold was burning his face, numbing his toes. He crawled up the stairs from the river on his belly, half-aware of the world around him, but unable to feel it except in the pounding of his mind, which imagined sensations that
weren’t there. A slow, pinkish warmth was beginning somewhere in the back of his stomach, as if it grew from the spine and spread, narrowing his vision and muffling all sounds in his ears. Instinct said very quietly that this wasn’t a good thing, and when intellect growled, it retreated again. Though his mind tried to deny it, Lyle knew that unless he found somewhere warm, he’d soon be dead.

  What he found was Lucan Sasso.

  The punch threw him down into the snow piled against the side of the bridge, and sent dull pain coursing through his sleepy nerves. He crawled away blindly, tears rising involuntarily to his eyes and freezing to his eyelashes. The next blow knocked him back against the parapet, which he clung to as if it was his only friend, vision narrowing to a tight point, a sound in his ears like a bubbling volcano.

  The hand that closed around his shoulder and dragged him upright had the same iron of Selene’s grip, but the eyes that drew level with Lyle’s had a tormented, broken fire in them that Selene had never understood. They were the eyes of a man whose mind was not entirely his own, that saw more things than they could cope with, and that could no longer hide the madness burning in the mind behind them.

  For a second Lucan Sasso just stood holding Lyle, whose toes trailed uselessly on the ground, as if wondering which death was more suitable. Lyle, all feeling gone from his arms, his feet, his mind, numb to everything except the pain trying to break through the icy barrier that surrounded his senses, didn’t fight. He half-closed his eyes, and let himself hear the only thoughts that were left, as the city sang its songs in his ears.

  And here, now, was the city, in Horatio Lyle’s head.

  Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,

  Go to sleep, my little angel.

  Blacks and bays,

  Dapples and greys,

  Coach and six of little horses.