by A. W. Exley
The group halted and one man detached himself. He brushed aside a charged pike like a willow twig, despite the base sizzling with coiled electricity. Tall and lean with an angular face and lush blond hair, some would label him handsome in a pale consumptive way. His black clothing made him appear more undertaker than aristocrat, the somber attire relieved only by a deep purple waistcoat―the royal colour―and a crisp white cravat. He gave a perfunctory bow, the barest inclination of his upper body. A titter ran through the crowd at the slight to the tsar.
“I am Duke Nolton, here on Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s instruction.” His gaze swung around the assembled nobles and diplomats. He stretched out an arm, terminated by an accusing finger, and pointed directly at Nate. “That man is a traitor to England, who has escaped from the Tower of London. I am tasked with returning him to face his execution.”
Alexander flicked his gaze over Nate and then to Nikolai, who gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. The tsar returned his attention to the noble before him.
“Viscount Lyons is a friend of this court. Why would I hand him over to you?” Once more in control of the room, he returned to his ornate throne. He rested his chin on curled fingers stroking the side of his mutton chop moustache, waiting to be convinced.
Nolton blinked as though unused to being questioned. “Queen Victoria demands―”
Alexander held up his hand, silencing the intruder. “Your queen thinks to make demands of me? Despite Victoria extending the boundaries of her British Empire, I believe I am still tsar here.”
Laughter rolled through the crowd. Nolton turned, looking for a friend, an anchor to secure him while he launched his attack. The Chinese ambassador looked away and started examining the overhead chandelier. His actions so nonchalant and disinterested, they clashed with the rabid curiosity of the other ambassadors and nobles crammed into the royal chamber.
Ah. They reveal by trying to conceal, Nate thought as he watched the interaction, or lack thereof, between the two men.
Deep red crept up from under Nolton’s cravat and stole over his face. “I have orders. He is to be surrendered to my custody.” His finger jabbed at the air. A vein pulsed up the side of his forehead.
The tsar’s bodyguards shifted their weight on their feet. Too well trained to move out of formation, they swayed, balanced on the knife edge of readiness in case the interloper moved any closer toward their monarch.
“If I may make a suggestion, sire?” Nikolai stepped forward.
Alexander turned to his spy master, curiosity written on his face at the unusual interruption. “Yes, Count Dukov?”
“Perhaps we should allow the gentlemen to settle this matter between them in a more courtly manner?”
Alexander laughed, catching Nikolai’s meaning. “Excellent suggestion. Bring me two swords,” he shouted. “Duke Nolton, if you can best Viscount Lyons with a blade, you can have him.”
Nolton’s eyes narrowed, his gaze flitting from the tsar to Nate. “I am here on a mission for the queen of the British Empire. I do not need to best this criminal to reinforce my position; he is unworthy of staining my blade.”
“Ouch,” Nate murmured, placing a hand over his heart.
“You are beneath my contempt.” Nolton’s volume escalated with his temper.
“And yet, you travelled all this way just to fetch me back.” The other man’s temper tantrum was insufficient to crack Nate’s cool façade. He held his control while the other noble raged like a thwarted child.
“Enough!” Alexander silenced the combatants. “Either draw your sword and demonstrate your claim of superiority, or leave my presence.”
A low reptilian hiss escaped from between the duke’s ground teeth, his gaze locking with Nate’s. “This is not over.”
With the scantest regard to protocol, he spun on his heel and strode from the audience chamber. British soldiers disengaged from the tsar’s bodyguard, and scrambled to keep pace with their lord.
The Chinese ambassador turned from his survey of the light fittings and stared at the departing retinue. One fine eyebrow arched as Nolton passed. Nate caught the almost imperceptible movement. The brief exchange of minute facial expressions completed in a matter of mere seconds.
“Alexander is dragging the court to Peterhof tomorrow on a wolf hunt. The ambassadors will have to follow.” Nikolai also saw the tiny exchange. “China will be required to attend as will his wife, who I understand is rather timid on the field. It would be unfortunate if she found herself over horsed. I bet she would appreciate another woman or two looking out for her.”
Nate slapped his friend on the back. “I like a good chase, don’t you?”
utumn’s cold winds marched in time with the soldiers, brushing at heels, sending boots scuffing along the paving like fallen leaves. The enormous courtyard before Buckingham Palace teemed with thousands of soldiers, shivering in their thin wool uniforms, constant movement the most effective method to fend off the chill. From up high, black clad bodies crawled over one another like ants, obscuring the surface they trod as they followed an unseen trail. Impossible to distinguish individual features, they became one mass with one common purpose―their queen’s purpose.
“How many?” she asked. “Do you think they are as numerous as the cobbles beneath their feet?” she mused aloud.
From behind her, the general spoke. “I believe there are close to two hundred thousand men assembled, ma’am. It will take weeks using all our fleet, both air and sea, to transport them to strategic locations around mainland China.”
Victoria pressed her forehead to the glass. “It’s not enough.”
The general spluttered. “Ma’am?”
She turned to fix with him a frozen stare. “It’s not enough!” she screamed, rage boiling over in an instant like a tea kettle blowing steam. “We have care of nearly nineteen million souls in this land, and only a measly two hundred thousand come before us? We want every able bodied man ready to fight for England, for the Empire. We have called, they must answer.”
His walrus moustache wagged up and down, but words failed to find their way past. He shut his mouth, coughed, and tried again. “Ma’am, we cannot; such a mass conscription would have a devastating effect. We would leave farms with no hands to tend the land or animals. Factories with no men to work the machines, families with no leader―”
“Our sisters will answer the call.” Victoria spun back to the window, her hands stretching wide, encompassing the view beyond from one edge of the horizon to the other. “Men have long underestimated women, but we are the spine, holding aloft our great country. Our men will fight while women will run the land and factories. Mothers, daughters, and sisters will keep hearth and home.”
The general turned worried eyes to the queen’s consort where he leaned against the map covering one wall. Albert rubbed his eye sockets trying to dislodge the growing throb in his skull.
“You heard the queen. All men must answer the royal command.” He echoed the words she expected to hear. To those around they always presented a united front, only in complete privacy would he raise a dissenting voice and present his concerns.
With the black plumed hat tucked under his arm, the general bowed to the rigid back of the queen. “Ma’am, it will be done.” Snapping his heels together, he spun and left the room.
Victoria stood in the pale sunlight, the rays lighting on the heavy gold collar around her neck at odds with her somber purple gown. The Horus eye drank up the light, the ruby glowing bright for a moment before flashes of electricity surged over the metallic links, sparking up toward the scarabs sitting on the queen’s shoulders.
Albert blinked, wishing his eyes tricked him. An icy cold finger trailed over his vertebrae as he watched Victoria absorb the evil sizzling over the collar. She drew a deep breath and exhaled, fixing her unblinking gaze on her husband.
He grew weary. The strong and determined girl he married changed before his eyes. She hurtled down a path drenched in blood.
The people would not stand by, silently, while she drained the life force from their sons and husbands in China’s rice paddies and fields.
“Do you need such an army, my love?” he pitched his voice low, not wanting to stir her anger. “England signed a treaty with China after the Opium Wars and they have done nothing to offend us.”
“They seek to bind us in silken chains. The death of the old emperor leaves the way open for a new regime. Better we conquer them before they turn their eyes to our shores.”
Albert tried to navigate a path through the maze holding her mind. “Surely domestic matters occupy their time; the new emperor is only a child, and his ambassadors have given no hint of breaking the treaty.”
“We are surrounded by the stench of betrayal. It offends our nostrils.” She whirled back to the window. Only the rhythmic movement of the thousands of amassed soldiers below calmed the desperate need building within her. “Viscount Lyons stole our dragon and conspires against us.”
Albert took a measured step toward his wife like a man approaching a feral dog trapped in a corner. “Do you truly believe he works against us? He has been a most loyal spy for many years. Unlike his accuser, who frequently speaks out in the House against our reign, and interposes his own will upon our decrees.”
“Do you question us? China will bow to me and India will be reminded who is their empress.” Victoria’s eyes shone with an unnatural blue light as though they had been enamelled by a master jeweller to be the brightest cobalt imaginable. “Then, Albert, only then, shall come our greatest triumph. We shall return the Americans to our bosom.” She clasped her hands over her breast, an expression of rapture upon her face. The small scarabs at her shoulders extended their tiny wings and buzzed humming along with the mad crooning of their mistress.
“You should rest, my love. Perhaps a bath while I read to you?” He raised a hand, reaching for the necklace. If he could only remove it from about her person. The right scarab rose up on its hind legs, and sounded a metallic hiss. With wings extended, a small spark shot between them. His hand froze, and the insect dropped back, becoming nothing more than a jewelled adornment again.
“Even you, Albert?” she cried. “You will not take it from us. You want the power for yourself, but we will not let you!” She danced out of his reach, spinning about the room, until she came to a stop, arms stretched over the painting of the globe, her hands caressing each continent.
“No, Victoria, I do not want the power, and I do not believe you want it at such a cost, either.” Albert backed from the room and closed the doors. Leaning against the heavy panelling, he wiped both hands up over his face, trying to wash the image from his memory of his wife’s descent into madness. “God help us, she will kill us all.”
His tired gaze lighted on the other man in the room, lingering in the scant shadow cast by the high wall sconces. A constant presence, but one seldom needed, he was their liaison to the darker corners of the Empire. “I need to get a message to Lady Lyons, can you do that?”
He nodded. “Yes, your highness. I was told to be ready in case you expressed such a need.”
Nate and Nikolai returned to the hotel suite to discover the women on their second bottle of champagne and exchanging stories like giggling schoolgirls. Natalie was curled into a large armchair while Cara lay on the lush Persian rug.
“Another successful day?” Nate asked, pulling off his cravat and draping the silk over a chair back before he dropped onto a sofa.
“No.” Cara laughed, rolling onto her stomach to look up at him and returned a half empty bottle to the low table. “But this stuff is really expensive and I’m trying to hurt your credit.”
Nikolai picked up Natalie and took her place in the armchair, resettling his wife on his lap. “The court moves for the hunt tomorrow. We need to watch the Chinese ambassador and his wife. She is a timid rider and may find herself with a nervous mount.”
Natalie frowned. “She could get hurt during the hunt.”
Nikolai stroked his wife’s back. “Then see to it you two stay close. She may be in need of rescue.”
“I didn’t bring suitable riding clothes with me.” Cara said. “Unless I can ride out dressed as a boy?”
“I have an idea,” Natalie said, giving Cara a conspiratorial wink. “And it will set us apart from the other women.”
Nate watched the woman lying at his feet. Her emotions skated across her face, leaving an obvious path, foremost amongst them curiosity and mischief. Wide hazel eyes lighted on him. Numerous glasses of champagne loosened her control on the valve connecting them and emotion buzzed through their bond. She arched her back off the floor, arms thrown over her head. The stretch pulled her chemise up and exposed a midriff of porcelain skin. A sucker punch of longing hit him as her lips parted.
She never ceased to amaze him. The rape she suffered as a child never blackened her soul, although occasional nightmares plagued her slumber. Each time his heart broke anew as she cried out for someone to rescue her. Only with his arms tight around her, would her sobs diminish and her body settle back to sleep. Awake, she remained full of light and wonder, the perfect foil to his darkness and cynicism. He loved her with an intensity mere words could never convey, even if he had an eternity to find the right ones. Instead, every day, he showed her in a thousand ways: a look, a touch, a whisper through their bond. Her ears seldom heard the words, but her body drank his love through every pore.
He had set a plan in motion, confident they would find evidence to bring down Nolton and refute his claims, allowing them to return to England and their home. Together.
Her eyes darkened to forest green. “I do have a hankering to go hunting.” Her tongue moistened carmine lips as her fingers played up the side of his booted calf.
His gaze never left her face. “You’re right, Nikolai, these two are going to get us in trouble.”
Cara stood on the small balcony and pulled the ermine lined cloak tighter around her body to keep out the bitter bite of the autumn chill. She gazed at the monstrosity huddled in the street below, waiting its aristocratic cargo. A land-strider, it resembled a turtle if the turtle had a shell four times the size of a carriage and possessed the legs of a mechanical camel.
Land-striders were the invention of a particularly insane Russian scientist, who wanted a form of transport that could traverse the countryside, navigate obstacles, and not be dependent on roads. The head of the turtle housed the driver, surrounded by the controls necessary to operate the creature as he peered out, suspended above the ground, his pod cantilevered from the main unit. Leadlight windows mimicked the pattern of a turtle shell and comprised the top half of the carriage area, the bottom half a solid metal wall. The interior was large enough to seat ten passengers at a time and offered a 360-degree view of the surrounding terrain in plush luxury.
This particular model was steam powered. A poor unfortunate sat in the rear caboose, slapped on like a giant carbuncle on the turtle’s backside, his job to shovel the coal to keep the machine operational. Protective goggles wrapped around his head and kept the acrid smoke from blowing back into his eyes, but left the rest of his face to blacken from constant exposure to the coal dust and smoke.
Nate stepped out onto the balcony and wrapped his arms around her waist. Then one hand reached up to pull aside the cloak so he could nestle his face close to her neck. His cheek grazed against hers. Cara closed her eyes for a moment, indulging in the contact, even with only a tiny amount of skin.
Opening her eyes, she watched as four squealing young women and their chaperones were handed up into the vehicle.
“They look like they will enjoy the journey.” Nate pointed out.
“That’s because they don’t have the common sense they should have been born with to spot the potential danger. That sort would stroll down a Whitechapel lane at night, alone, and unarmed, and be gobsmacked when they are grabbed from behind.”
The heavy door swung shut and the footman bolted it from the outside. C
ara shuddered at the thought of being trapped inside. The doors were locked for passenger safety. When first unveiled, some over-excitable people tried to leap from the land-strider while in movement with fatal results. It also meant you couldn’t get out, which violated Cara’s always have an escape route policy.
He smiled against the curve of her neck. “You don’t think the risk is worth the adventure?”
The machines also had a propensity to trip over and dash the occupants to death against the interior of the carriage. “I’ve already undertaken my suicide mission quota for the month by rescuing my husband’s arse from the Tower.”
“And don’t think his arse isn’t grateful.” His lips skimmed up her neck.
The beast rose on unsteady legs, the knee joints wobbled and made the passenger cab rock back and forth until it reached full height. Unfurled, the deformed turtle reached high enough to look in first story windows and could step over carriages and any other obstacles in its path. The women inside waved furiously at Cara from just below her feet. They laughed and squealed as their vehicle moved up the street with a gentle sway like riding a camel.
“I bet at least two of them fall off during the hunt,” she uttered her prediction for the silly creatures.
“We are in agreement about the land-striders. I think they’re death traps on stilts. Nikolai has a set of four mechanical horses to pull his carriage. He will meet us downstairs shortly.”
A tingle of excitement ran through Cara’s veins; ahead laid her first royal hunt and her first attempt at espionage. I could get used to this life.
bronze statue come to life walked through the assembled crowd as pale autumn sunlight danced over the metal horse. Flashes of gold raced over its rump with each stride coming from the imperial eagle inlaid in silver on each haunch. The tsar sat upon a mechanical horse, a silver wool cloak with a fur trim over his shoulders. No risk would be taken with his safety; the metal equine would perform with perfect manners and the monarch was in no danger of life or limb during the upcoming fast and furious hunt.