The Osiris Curse

by Paul Crilley

  Octavia was right. Chase wasn't going to like this. Not one little bit.

  Which made Tweed a bit happier. Any opportunity to wind up the self-absorbed spy was time well spent in Tweed's book.

  And on top of that, they finally got their revenge on Harry Banks for betraying them. He'd go to jail for this, no doubt about it.

  “I think it's probably best if I explain all this to Chase,” said Tweed, gleefully rubbing his hands together.

  “Good idea. I'll stand in the background. Not drawing attention to myself.”

  Tweed raised an eyebrow at her. “Trying not to draw attention to yourself is going to be pretty difficult when we march these things up to the front door of Ravenstone Lodge,” said Tweed. “I mean, it's not like we can just leave them here, is it?”

  Octavia looked around in dismay at the devastation they had caused. “I hadn't thought about that.”

  “Buck up,” said Tweed. “I mean, what can he actually do?”

  “He's a spy, Tweed. He can do a lot of things.”

  “Hah. But can he? Really?”

  “Yes,” said Octavia evenly. “He can. And I rather think he would.”

  Tweed hesitated. “Oh.” He thought about this for a second, then shrugged and grinned. “Oh well. Who wants to live forever? Besides, it will be worth it just to see the look on his face.”

  Ravenstone Lodge was a hundred-year-old manor house that hunkered on the outskirts of London. It was a crumbling edifice covered in moss and ivy, slipping into ruin like a decrepit old man who had decided that personal hygiene simply wasn't something he was going to bother with anymore.

  The house was hidden from the prying eyes of the unwelcome (which pretty much meant everyone) by expansive, rambling grounds and a thick screen of ancient trees that ran around the perimeter of the property.

  At 4:43 on this wintery Thursday morning the house was in darkness. The brittle light of the full moon shone through naked tree branches, throwing gnarled and twisted shadows onto the ground. The frigid wind set the branches clacking, the shadows shifting and stretching as if they were skeletal hands trying to dig up the frozen earth.

  A fox screamed in the distance. An owl grumpily called out a reply.

  Then silence.

  Then…

  Clump clump. Hissss-s-s-s-s.

  Clump Clump. Clump, clump. Hiss-s-s-s-s.

  The owl opened one eye, glancing down from his perch in a tall chestnut tree to the lane leading up to the house.

  It stared. It ruffled its feathers. Then it opened its second eye, as if wasn't sure it was seeing correctly.

  Here is what it saw…

  Two twelve-foot automata moving inexpertly up the lane, staggering and stumbling like drunkards. The automata held their arms out in front of them, and cradled in these arms were two bound and unconscious figures.

  The automata moved through the rusted iron gates and onto the graveled driveway that led up to the house. They stopped before the front door and one of the automata slowly lowered its arms to gently place its captive on the ground.

  And then a series of bright lights switched on, shining directly on the two constructs.

  “Raise your hands in the air,” said a crackly, disembodied voice. “I repeat, raise your hands in the air and do nothing more. Failure to comply will be treated as an act of aggression and will be dealt with severely.”

  The first automata slowly raised its arms. The second construct's arms shot upward as well. Unfortunately, the driver forgot what he was holding, and the bound figure sailed backward over the automaton's head and landed somewhere behind him.

  “Don't shoot, you idiots!” shouted a young man's voice. “It's us!” And then, “Oh. Did I just—?”

  The construct lumbered around in a circle and stared at the groaning figure now sprawled untidily on the gravel.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “What were you thinking?” snapped Barrington Chase.

  Octavia hung her head and stared at the richly patterned carpet. She could see Tweed's feet just to her right. He was moving his weight from one to the other, impatient, frustrated. She sighed. She could see how this was going to go.

  “We were thinking about foiling a criminal syndicate that if left unchecked would have cleaned out every bank in the city,” snapped Tweed.

  “That's not your job, boy!”

  Octavia finally looked up. They were in the library of Ravenstone Lodge, surrounded by ceiling-high shelves of books, comfortable armchairs, and dim lamp light. Normally, she loved it here. It was so peaceful. So calming. Whenever Octavia stepped through the door she felt she could just melt into the room, into the smells of leather and old books, the scent of bees wax polish and paraffin.

  But right now, the usual peaceful atmosphere was marred by the fury of Barrington Chase and the mild annoyance of Henry Temple, who was lounging in a chair by the window.

  Barrington Chase was a member of Her Majesty's Secret Service. A spy, and one of Queen Victoria's best, apparently. She had put him in charge of their training and education, and to say the man resented it was like saying Tweed was ever so slightly arrogant. Chase hated his assignment, thought it a complete waste of time. And he took every opportunity to let them both know.

  Just as Tweed took every opportunity to let Chase know that he agreed.

  Even at this time of the morning Chase was immaculately presented, wearing a crimson silk dressing gown and holding a large snifter of brandy. His hair was slicked back in a middle parting, his mustache perfectly coiffed. He didn't even look tired.

  “I thought our job was to do what was right.”

  “Oh, don't be so obtuse,” Chase snapped. “Your job is to learn from myself and Temple and to be ready when you are called upon. If you stray from that remit, if you behave in a manner that brings the Crown into disrepute, then that's on your own head. Something I will be telling Her Majesty when I see her later on today.”

  “You're telling on us?” said Tweed incredulously.

  “I think filing a report is a better way of putting it,” said Temple.

  Henry Temple was also a spy, but he was the complete opposite of Chase. Unassuming, quiet, friendly, he always went out of his way to explain his teachings, to make sure they understood the theory behind the lessons.

  He smiled apologetically from where he lounged in an armchair, sipping tea and looking tired. “Sorry. Has to be done. The Queen will have to be made aware of your part in all this.”

  “But we didn't do anything wrong,” protested Octavia.

  “I didn't say you did.”

  “I say you did,” said Chase. “You drew attention to yourself. I'm assuming there were witnesses? Is it too much to ask that you managed to foil this robbery quickly and quietly?”

  Octavia and Tweed said nothing.

  “I thought so.” Chase put his brandy glass down. “I've made it perfectly clear I thought this assignment a waste of time. Whatever the Queen sees in you I do not see. Whatever plans she has for you, I think she is going to be sorely disappointed. And yes,” he said, “before you bring it up yet again, of course I read the Lazarus report. And whereas you see brilliant detective work I see amateurish joining of the dots and lots and lots of luck. I hope you at least took some precautions? No one saw you coming here?”

  “Of course not,” said Octavia.

  “That is something at least.”

  Chase headed toward the door. “Expect to be called in for an audience with the Queen later on today,” he said. “I'm sure she'll want a few words with you.”

  “One thing,” said Tweed. “When you file your report with the Queen, tell her Harry Banks had access to technology I've never seen on the streets before.”

  Temple leaned forward. “What kind of technology?”

  “Some sort of invisibility device. That's why no one had seen his automata before.”

  Temple and Chase exchanged glances.

  “Not so hopeless now, are we?” said Tweed.
“Looks like there's someone on the payroll selling off the government's secrets.”

  “Funny how we've never had that kind of problem before,” said Chase.

  “Well you've got that kind of problem now.”

  “The timing is…odd, don't you think?” said Chase, a glitter in his eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, you know. Change of managerial staff. New people in charge at the Ministry. Unproven people.”

  Tweed took an angry stride toward Chase. Temple quickly got to his feet and stepped between them.

  “Come now. Enough of this. Chase, you should know better.”

  Chase glared at Temple, then swept out of the room.

  Octavia released a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. After the events of last autumn, the Queen had asked Tweed's adoptive father, Barnaby Tweed, to head up the Ministry, taking over from the traitor Lucien. Barnaby turned her down straight away, but the Queen didn't let up. She said it was because he was so adamantly against it that she wanted him for the job. He'd worked there in the past, he'd proven himself an honest and loyal subject, and she would hear no more words about it.

  In the end, Barnaby didn't really have a choice.

  Naturally, there were a lot of…questions about his appointment. But there wasn't much anyone could do when it was by order of the ruler of the British Empire.

  “I hate that man,” said Tweed.

  “I think the feeling is mutual,” said Temple, patting Tweed on the shoulder. He yawned and scratched his head. “Excuse me. Think I'd better get dressed. Looks like it's going to be a long day.”

  He headed toward the door, but paused and turned around. “For what it's worth, I think you did a good job tonight. And I'll be filing my own report with the Queen.”

  Once Temple had left, Tweed headed over to the roll top desk and shuffled through the papers inside.

  “What are you doing?” asked Octavia. “That's Chase's desk.”

  Tweed looked at her like she was an idiot. “I know that. Why do you think I'm looking?”

  “Stop it. That could be his private letters.”

  Tweed grinned over his shoulder at her. “Exactly.”

  “Ahem.”

  Octavia whirled around to find Mr. McAllen, Barrington Chase's butler standing in the doorway. He frowned at Tweed, who was now doing the head-tilted-sideways stance of someone reading the spines of books, (or at least, pretending to read the spines of books), then turned his attention to Octavia.

  “Mr. Temple asked me to give this to you.”

  He held out a small envelope.

  “Shouldn't you be asleep?” she asked, taking it from him.

  McAllen's eyebrows rose. “Rather hard to sleep when automata are storming the citadel, so to speak.”

  Octavia flushed. “Oh. Yes. Sorry about that. It was a bit of an emergency.”

  “I'm sure it was, Miss.”

  Octavia studied the envelope. It didn't have a stamp or anything. Just her name scrawled in untidy writing. “When did this arrive?”

  “Around midnight, miss.”

  Octavia looked at McAllen in surprise. “Midnight? Tonight, midnight?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Who delivered it?”

  “I didn't get the gentleman's name, miss, but he did say he was from the docks.”

  Octavia didn't hear anything else. She ripped the seal on the envelope and quickly read the contents. Her mouth went dry. She looked at Tweed, then back at the letter, rereading it to make sure she hadn't made a mistake.

  That name you tagged came in. Can only hold him for a few hours. Get here quick.

  “Tweed,” she said urgently. “We need to go.”

  Tweed held up a book. “Look. The Collected Sherlock Holmes, by Dr. John Watson. Maybe I should—” He saw the expression on her face. “What is it?”

  She held out the letter. He hurried over and read it, then broke into a huge grin and gripped her by the shoulders.

  “Finally! A lead!” He frowned at her. “Why aren't you smiling? You should be smiling. Songbird, I insist you smile.”

  Octavia smiled hesitantly, but it quickly faded. She was too scared it would be a dead end. A false alarm.

  Tweed waved the Sherlock book above his head. “What is it Sherlock says? The game's getting started?” He frowned. “No, that's not right. The game's begun? No. The game's heating up?”

  “Afoot,” Octavia said wearily. “The game's afoot.”

  Tweed frowned. “No, that doesn't sound right. No matter,” he said, tossing the book onto the couch. “I'm sure it will come to me.”

  The London Docks never slept. No matter what time of day or night there was always a constant stream of traffic—yachts, steamboats, schooners, ferries—all of them jostling for position in the harbor, their masts like hundreds of spears thrusting up against the soot-heavy sky.

  Cargo ships from India unloaded tea. Boats from South America brought in bales of tobacco. Ships from China carried richly-colored silks. And buried beneath the coffee and the spices was the trade of a more questionable cargo, one that made more money that all the tea and cloth put together: opium, the drug of choice for the London addict.

  Octavia and Tweed hurried along the quayside. The air was redolent with a clashing mixture of scents and stenches. Perfumes, spices, and cloves competing against rotting fruit that had stayed too long in the hold, stale sweat, and rotting fish. Octavia wrinkled her nose. The smell hung in the air like a miasma, an almost physical presence that she could feel settling over her skin, coating it with a patina of dead ocean as they made their way to the Royal Albert Dock.

  Octavia wouldn't let herself get excited. She'd already felt the sting of disappointment and didn't want to feel it again. Back in the autumn she'd finally thought she knew what happened to her mother, missing for over a year while investigating the supposed return of Professor Moriarty. All the clues pointed to the underground prison of the Ministry, the prison where Tweed's father was being held. They'd staged a rescue for Barnaby, but it was supposed to be a rescue for her mother as well.

  Except she wasn't there. She had been moved some two weeks previously.

  That soul-crushing feeling of being so close yet still failing was not something she wished to experience again.

  It hadn't been a total loss. Stepp Reckoner had managed to get a name from the Ministry analytical machines, the name of the person who had somehow signed her mother out of prison.

  Benedict Wilberforce.

  They had searched far and wide for some clue as to who this mysterious person was, but they had come up a blank. It was as if he didn't exist. No birth certificate, no police record, nothing. Octavia had finally resorted to giving the name to every harbor master, customs officer, and dock hand she could find, promising a hefty reward if she was notified when someone bearing the name was spotted.

  “Cheer up, Songbird,” said Tweed, putting a friendly arm around her shoulder. “All your questions are about to be answered. Wasn't it a good idea of mine to pass the name around the docks? I think it was. I think it was a splendid idea.”

  “As I recall, I'm the one who came up with that. You said it would be a waste of time.”

  “Nonsense,” said Tweed cheerfully. “I'd never say something like that.”

  Octavia shook her head, but couldn't help a small grin from appearing. She liked to see Tweed happy. And he was always happy when he was showing off. And when he was being arrogant, of course. That went without saying.

  She been worrying about him lately. She got the feeling he'd been avoiding her, keeping more and more to himself. She supposed she couldn't blame him. Finding out you were a simulacrum of someone else must come as something of a shock. She knew he was struggling with it, struggling to figure out who he was, to understand what was truly him and what was the legacy of Sherlock Holmes. He was confused, angry. She'd seen the dark moods take him, watched him try to fight them off. All Octavia could do was be there for him
.

  Which she herself was finding rather difficult. The problem was—and she was incredibly embarrassed even admitting it to herself—she suspected she might just possibly be developing…feelings for Tweed.

  She shied away from the thought even as it flitted through her mind. She couldn't even admit it to herself! But something was definitely changing in how she looked at him.

  She actually found herself angry that the thoughts even existed. She didn't want to be a cliché, the helpless girl who falls for the boy. If anything, he should fall for her. That would be acceptable. Then she wouldn't ever have to say she ran after a boy.

  Which she wouldn't do. Ever.

  So she had her own things to sort out, which made helping Tweed through his own issues a bit of a problem. But she would try her best.

  They dodged around workers offloading piles of coal and sailors leaving their berths, purses full of money and ready to release some pent-up frustration with the aid of “women of questionable virtue,” as Tweed put it. Automata could be seen here and there, their presence betrayed by the white glow that pierced the dockside gloom—the human souls trapped in the constructs by Ministry Mesmers, the souls that enabled them to follow instructions and solve rudimentary problems. The automata carried the heaviest crates, the constructs easily doing the work of three men.

  It was a practice that was slowly taking traction, despite it making a lot of workers unhappy. In the past, if a merchant tried to use a construct at the docks for any kind of manual labor, things…tended to happen to them. They disappeared, or their æther cages were somehow ruptured, the trapped souls that powered the automata drifting into the air and dispersing like a breath on the wind. But nowadays there was evidence of a slow change of thought. It was becoming more acceptable to use automata, especially for some of the more unpleasant tasks.

  They arrived at the dock and customs office and hurried inside. It was small and cramped inside the low building. A harassed man wearing tiny spectacles filled in paperwork at a cluttered desk. A line of rickety chairs was taken up by those who were deemed suspicious enough for the authorities to interview.