The Piper Revolution Boxset: An Urban Fantasy Trilogy

by Giselle Ava

  “It will be difficult,” Fortescue says.

  “I don’t like the alternative much better.”

  Fortescue thinks on this, nods. I wait in the shadows, staring at him. I don’t trust Fortescue. I never have. He takes a drag of his cigarette, exhales softly. “I will put an end to the fighting at dawn. The streets will remain heavily policed.”

  “If that’s what it takes,” Mildred says.

  “Until the people have made peace with it themselves.”

  “Of course.” She smiles softly. Fortescue does not, simply sucks on his cigarette and then exhales again, smoke curdling through the room. He stands and Mildred does too. Fortescue looks at me. This was the only time he did that entire night. He looks at me with the cigarette poking out between his lips. He has a gun. It will be done at dawn, he says. There’s a clock in this room, hanging from the wall, and the time is just past ten. Dawn is at least eight hours away, and the nights are long in London under the anti-mech regime of Charles Fortescue.

  “That will be all?” Fortescue says to Mildred.

  She nods, extending her hand. Fortescue takes it hesitantly, then retreats, and I watch his back illuminated by the streetlamps outside the window.

  “There is one more thing,” Mildred says.

  Fortescue stops, his pistol clearly visible. He turns.

  “I hope you find it in your heart to forgive us, as we forgive you.”

  Fortescue weighs this. I’m waiting for him to do something, waiting for him to speak, but he does none of these things, simply gives a genteel nod and leaves the room.

  The door shuts behind him.

  “He’s feigning,” I say.

  Mildred sits back down with her hands on her slightly-bloated belly, the silver ring on her left hand shining under the firelight. She’s pregnant and she’s engaged to Thomas Cobbe. I’ve never met the man but I know his name. I know how much he means to her.

  She sighs. “We need to trust him.”

  “I know this man. He cannot be dealt with.”

  “Arthur, if there’s no trust, we’ll never make peace.”

  “Charles Fortescue is not a man you can bargain with.”

  Mildred shakes her head as she stares up at me. A silence falls across the room so thick you can hear the floorboards creak as I shift my weight ever so slightly. “I know as much as anybody how cruel this world can be. I know men like Fortescue. I watched my own father be shot by him, simply for being alive and doing what they told him to do. But that’s what makes us human, Arthur, to make mistakes but also to have the capacity to forgive, and mend wounds. Without that, we’re just like animals, fighting until the other side is dead.”

  “Their defences will be down,” I tell her.

  “I will not raise my child in a society built on bloodshed.”

  “Fortescue is a hateful man, Mildred. He knows that we are weakened. He knows that our own defences will be down. He will strike us before dawn, and wipe us all out.”

  And Mildred listens to me, because she knows I’m telling the truth.

  “I know where he is,” I tell her. “I know how we can end this.”

  And Mildred doesn’t say a word, because she’s tired and she’s pregnant and she’s been fighting for so long it doesn’t make sense anymore, and she just wants to get back to Thomas, who’s waiting for her in a place called the Crossroads, a place that’s safe.

  “What does Fortescue’s version of peace look like?” I say. “We will always be slaves to his regime. We will always be feared. We made them fear us.”

  “We can try to mend it,” she says noncommittally.

  “We have to set off the bombs across the city,” I tell her. These are the bombs we placed in Fortescue’s hotspots, meant to disrupt his communications and primary offensive positions. We have spies on the inside. They will die if we set off the bombs.

  “Thousands will die needlessly,” Mildred says.

  “Trust me, Mildred. I know this man.”

  And I remember that look on her face as she makes the greatest mistake of her life. She trusts me, and why shouldn’t she, after everything we’ve been through? Mildred Piper trusts me, and so she dies, and her unborn child dies, and the revolution along with them.

  We set off the bombs across London, and that’s the end.

  Fortescue Thinks

  There’s a man in the highest room in Fortescue Plaza, standing before the window and staring out at the vast metropolis of London, 1923. Airships sail through the sky, filling it with smoke and light. You can see the scales of the moon through the clouds.

  Charles Fortescue smokes a cigarette.

  London is beautiful, he thinks. A perfect machine. He did this. He raised it from the ruins of a war that they had no purpose in fighting, a war that might have wiped an entire generation from existence, and then he defended it well. Purged it of the mechanical disease that threatened to turn its populace from flesh and blood to metal and oil.

  When Charles offered them peace, they rebelled.

  Arthur, he thinks, chewing on the end of his cigarette. Where are you now? He would hunt down Arthur for as long as he lived, and he knew that one day he would have him exactly where he wanted him. It was becoming abundantly clear that no man or woman in London could kill him, none could capture him. Even a bomb dropped from the skies has its flaws.

  So it would be Charles himself.

  It was always going to be Charles.

  There is a knock at the door and Charles turns as it swings open. Standing in the doorway are two people. One of them is Horace Grenfell, his right hand man, a tall British officer in a black coat with white linings. The other, much shorter than Grenfell, is Cecelia Craxton.

  “Come in,” Charles says.

  Cecelia walks into the room with purpose, standing before him. Grenfell makes eye contact with Charles and then retreats, shutting the door. Cecelia wears a long dress of cerulean blue, her blonde hair falling in rolls across her slender shoulders.

  Charles walks to his desk and crushes his cigarette in the ashtray, sending a plume of smoke up into the air. He stares at the girl through the smoke. “A drink?” He takes the wine flask from the edge of the table and flips one glass face-up.

  “Sure,” Cecelia says.

  He flips the second one, fills them. He takes one and hands it to Cecelia, who takes it in her small hand. Charles takes his own glass and drinks from it while looking at her. “The rebels are proving difficult to stamp out, but we have them on the run. The time has come.”

  Cecelia licks her lips, wet from the wine. “How can I help?”

  Charles smiles, pacing around the table until he comes face-to-face with her. There isn’t much of Cecelia Craxton, but Charles knows her type. Those who witness their father be murdered in front of their eyes, they never forget the faces of the men who did it.

  “You’re going to have your revenge,” Charles whispers.

  Cecelia stares at him, her celestial blue eyes swirling like stars.

  Charles reaches into his coat and pulls out the steel syringe. There’s a flash of movement and suddenly the needle has lodged itself in Cecelia’s abdomen. She gasps but Charles grabs her tight and doesn’t let go. Her wine glass falls to the floor, splashing everywhere.

  “This is from Arthur,” Charles says.

  Because several days ago, his men raided the workshop of Alan Piper, the uncle of Mildred Piper, and stole vials containing Arthur’s infected DNA, information containing the poison that makes him so dangerous. Several days ago, his men captured Alan Piper and forced him to construct the vial that could turn somebody into a weapon like they were.

  And now it’s spreading through the Craxton girl’s body like a cancer. She stares at him with wide eyes, her mouth slightly agape. Charles rips out the syringe and throws her away from him. She staggers for a moment, before collapsing to the carpet. Her body twitches.

  Thunder rumbles in the sky and the city blinks.

  Cecelia Craxton begins
to convulse on the carpet as Charles takes a sip from his glass of wine. Outside, the sky shrieks and lightning tears down, bathing the room in exuberant white. There’s a distant scream and Charles gives a smile that’s his and his alone.

  Rain begins to fall over London.

  Craxton in the Storm

  The revolution’s tyrant, a man who they call Arthur, murdered my father.

  I was there when it happened. Arthur commanded his men to take me hostage, to use me as some kind of bargaining chip, and so it came to be that I was kneeling on the hard wooden floorboards inside a place they called the Gresham Club.

  They had a gun to my father’s head.

  My father, Bernard Craxton, a prominent officer within Fortescue’s army, did everything they asked of him. He complied with everything they said and then—

  I feel something burn inside me. It’s been there ever since Fortescue himself injected me with that serum, one night several days ago as lightning crashed in the skies outside his tower. The back of my hand tingles as I take the hand hold hanging from the train’s ceiling, staring through the window at the station as we enter it. It’s quiet and still in the train compartment, just myself and three other people, one of them asleep.

  It’s just past one o’clock in the morning and London is dark.

  I step out of the train and onto the platform, my shoes making dull claps on painted lines. A torn-apart newspaper sails through the air, landing by my feet. I step over it, immediately walking to the stairs leading back onto the street.

  My name is Cecelia Craxton.

  I saved Arthur’s life several weeks ago. I had been living in a little hovel underneath a dress shop. Arthur came to me after the revolution collapsed and Fortescue murdered Mildred Piper. He would have died out there. Fortescue hated mechanicals, especially ones called Arthur. My father hated them too. My father was a frightened man. How can you blame them? How can you blame anybody in this city who fears the people made of metal?

  But I didn’t. I treated Arthur. I gave him kindness.

  And then he shot my father in the face.

  Cold winds slam into me as I emerge from the subway, and I grip my coat tight about myself. Rain is pouring down with vigour, thrashing the empty roads. I squint, glancing up at the streetlamp over me. A single raven sits on top of it, silhouetted against the sky.

  Arthur lived. He found a place called the Crossroads. Fortescue says it was the centre of their crippled organisation, so he bombed it, but they escaped, and Arthur lived.

  Arthur took an outpost and more “Unkindly” with him. Fortescue bombed that, too, after learning that Arthur would be there, but no—this failed. Because Arthur stopped the bomb with his mind. That’s what these people can do. That’s why nobody can kill Arthur.

  He always lives.

  I keep my head down as I follow the sidewalk with haste. Mist lies thick across the streets of London, 1923, a strangling mist that’s suffocating in the way it grips the city. Thunder rumbles in the sky where airships float. Lightning tears from the clouds, illuminating the city.

  The world had stopped momentarily, three days without anything. Nobody had seen or heard from the man they called Arthur until recently, when he ordered an assault on another one of Fortescue’s outposts, killing a dozen civilians in the process. This is what he does. He just destroys, and he disrupts, and he doesn’t care about anyone.

  I know where Arthur is.

  I’m meeting with him tonight.

  My eyes squint up to the ravenous storm clouds, pulsating with flashing lights. I’m standing beneath the tilted sign outside a bar called the Lamb & Flag, sequestered down a dark alleyway. This is where he’ll be. I hold my breath as my hand touches the wooden door, and I lean into it, hearing low voices from within. Chattering and laughter, most of them drunk, the sorts of voices you hear in a bar at a little past one in the morning on a stormy night.

  Arthur is a tyrant. He murdered my father and he will continue to kill as many people as he needs until he reaches Fortescue. He knows nothing else. He will stop at nothing. The man must die, and I want to be the one who does it. When I close my eyes, all I see is the face of my father before Arthur murdered him. But this is what he does, and more and more people fall under his spell. London is a breeding ground for hatred. Everybody hates everybody. Everybody fears the other side. When will it erupt? When is the grand crescendo?

  Soon.

  I can’t hurt Arthur as he hurt me, because Arthur cares only about himself and his own mission. The only thing I can do is kill him. And I will.

  Cecelia Craxton will have her revenge.

  There’s a sickness surging through my blood, the same sickness that surges inside of Arthur. I wasn’t born like this, as many of them were; no, a man called Alan Piper formulated this serum after Fortescue’s men captured him and raided his workshop. Alan Piper saved Arthur’s life once, and now he will be the death of him. The serum was formulated from Arthur’s own mutated cells, and those cells are now inside me. In some macabre way, I think to myself, slowly guiding the door open, the howling storm replaced by warm chatter, in some macabre way Arthur’s own power will be his demise. But I figure Arthur has always been his own worst enemy. Tonight will be the end of him. Tonight, the revolution will lose its head.

  I throw my body into the door and enter the Lamb & Flag.

  A Belated Confrontation

  The wooden table shakes as I set down my beer bottle and glance up at the opening door. Cigarette smoke wafts through the Lamb & Flag, deep in London. Beer spills, men groan and shout and somebody’s playing the piano at the back.

  The person who walks in is Cecelia Craxton.

  Poker chips fly across the table and somebody spews smoke into my face, tinged with the smell of alcohol. “Arthur,” this man grumbles. “You still playing?”

  I glance down at the cards in my hand. It’s an unlucky hand and, to be honest, I’ve been feeling unlucky all night. Two nights ago, I received a message from the Craxton girl. She wanted to meet me. I obliged, much to the chagrin of that man to my left, Thomas Cobbe.

  It was sometime between dawn and early morning when the call came through and I was sitting in the cellar under a pub owned by a fella called Havelock Hudson and his brother. This is where some of us held up following the bombings, now that we’re all scattered to the wind. The only thing keeping us as a revolution is the fact we were one some time ago. We’re barely hanging on, is what it feels like right now. Fortescue’s mob is out there patrolling the streets. They keep on killing us, and London is still a hot mess.

  But there we were, in the cellar of Havelock’s pub, and I was smoking a cigar. Walter Milne, hard as a rock; Roy Stirling, sharp as a knife; these are the sorts of men that were down there with me. The rest, they’re all out leading the rest of the revolution.

  Thomas Cobbe came down and said this: “The Craxton girl sent a message.” And he threw down a telegram on the table between us gentlemen.

  Lamb & Flag. Two nights.

  “She knows where we are,” Thomas says with disapproval, as though he thinks I have anything to do with that. I don’t. We don’t speak, me and the Craxton girl. That much is obvious when you consider I shot her father in the face.

  “I’ll meet with her,” I say.

  “It could be a trap,” Thomas says.

  “They could have sent a bomb, rather than a piece of paper,” I tell him, and Thomas studies me. Walter Milne says he’ll come with me. I tell him to keep watch on John Montgomery, the scientist we captured, the one who’s going to help us utilise the Unkindly army. Roy Stirling also has his own business to take care of. I say I’ll go alone.

  Thomas says, “No you won’t.”

  And so he’s sitting beside me winning at poker. Thing is, Thomas and me, we didn’t get along very well the first time we met, and we still don’t now, but the revolution has its best chance of winning when it’s us two together, on the same side.

  You glance at Thomas Cobbe�
�s finger and there’s a silver ring around it, because the poor man was engaged to Mildred Piper and he was going to be a father. That was, until I destroyed any notion of there being peace between us and them, and Mildred was killed by Fortescue.

  Every time he looks at me is a reminder of my failure.

  I promise that will be my last.

  I grab my walking stick and climb to my feet, kicking back my chair so it grinds across the floorboards. One of the men at the table complains about me leaving the game but I’m only looking at one thing, and that’s Cecelia Craxton by the door as it falls shut.

  Thomas also stands, he a little more easily than myself.

  You don’t need any more blood on your hands. This is the whine talking again. It’s still there in the back of my head, an annoying little tickle that I can’t quite seem to shake.

  We’ll see about that, I tell the whine.

  The Craxton girl’s shadow drips across the pub in the direction of the bar, splashing against one of the men who’s sitting there downing his second pint of lager. She sees me, and a lantern on the wall glints off her blue eyes. I remember those eyes. Cecelia Craxton saved my life, once. I suppose I do owe it to her not to kill her in return, but I’m not making any promises.

  “I can handle this,” I say to Thomas, forcing him back into his seat. One of the men at the table exhales cigarette smoke. Poker chips fly. The floorboards creak as I skirt the table and slowly approach Cecelia. Thunk, goes my walking stick. Step, creak, thunk.

  Stopping that bomb did a damn good job on me.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” I say, offering Cecelia my hand.

  Cecelia Craxton pulls out a pistol and fires. The muzzle flash lights up the entire pub, sending tables flying and drunkards leaping for cover. My body clenches and I grab onto my walking stick in an effort not to completely lose my balance. The floorboards tilt underneath my feet. The bullet springs off-course, tearing a hole in the roof of the pub. Cecelia’s eyes lock onto mine through the tangle of smoke rolling from the barrel of her gun.