The Iron Assassin Read online

  Reluctantly and raggedly, under his watchful eye, they all muttered “yes.”

  The last of them to do so—the woman known here only as “Blushing Niece”—had just given her acceptance, in a thin-lipped, far-less-than-pleased manner, when a bell set high on the wall chimed suddenly, once.

  Taken aback, the eight stared up at it, but Uncle strolled unhurriedly to uncap a speaking tube in the wall beneath it and ask, “Yes?”

  “Our eyes in Tower Street, sir, say two bodies have been brought in and laid out on a table in the station. Lady Hailsham and Lord Tempest. Both dead.”

  The eight broke into startled applause, but Uncle frowned.

  “Tempest dead! Are you sure?”

  “So our source says, sir. She drowned, and he blown up when a bomb went off in his London rooms.”

  “Auntie’s doing?” Cousin Alfred asked skeptically. “This subtlety is what you want us to let unfold?”

  Uncle ignored that, instead saying into the speaking tube, “Get there now and make very certain as to who is alive and who is dead, Whipsnade, and report back just as soon as you can—but don’t let yourself be recognized.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Uncle covered the speaking tube.

  “If Straker’s dead,” he told the gathered Order members grimly, “that leaves Marlshrike as the only man in the world who knows how to control iron assassins. And if he blows himself up experimenting…”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Steal Marlshrike from Auntie and procure some more expendable experimenters for her to ‘find’ as his replacement,” Uncle replied promptly.

  “I don’t know…” one of the men said uneasily.

  “Of course you don’t—and, yes, of course it’s a gamble for us all,” Uncle snapped. “Bids for power are never easy and are always fraught with daring chances, worry, and setbacks. If they weren’t, we’d all be trampled underfoot in the thunderous rush of every sooty-faced, horn-handed factory jack out there to mount their own bid for power.”

  He strode for the door he’d come in by but turned to add over his shoulder, “Remember that, and think on it when your nights are sleepless, as I do. Because one day—and I pray it be long after we are all dead, gone to graves gently after rich, long, and full lives—they will. Rise up, every last one of them, admitting no betters, and try to snatch the gold rings and high houses for their own. And God save the Empire then!”

  * * *

  Rose sighed, not for the first time, and stared out the window again. At what little could be seen in the first hint of dawn of what she knew to be a pleasant little slice of garden, sheltered between this wing of Foxden and the next, which hadn’t yet in her admittedly short experience of Foxden seemed to be populated by anything more than the occasional butterfly. It was sharing a cool breeze with the room, but it wasn’t a vista that changed much. She quelled a second, welling sigh.

  “Once more into the waiting arms of incipient boredom,” Hardcastle remarked with a smile, looking up from trimming his nails with a pocket knife. He was reclining on a couch displaying every evidence of contentment at being idle, whereas Rose itched to be up and doing.

  She let out her sigh, and said as much.

  Hardcastle shrugged. “I long ago lost track of how much of my life has been wasted just sitting around and waiting. Yet, believe me, I do know how you feel. It used to eat at me, too.”

  “So tell me: how did you come to accept it? the waiting?”

  Hardcastle shrugged. “Had an employer once who told me if I couldn’t manage sitting silently thinking, he’d set me to work digging my way down to Hades, shovelful by shovelful, and I could pass all waiting times that way. Well, my back soon told me that sitting quiet was preferable.”

  “So tell me,” Rose bade gently, genuinely curious, “how you came to work with Ja—with Lord Tempest.”

  Hardcastle blinked. “Long story.” When her glance told him she seemed silently ready to hear every word of it, he stared at the ceiling for a moment, then said, “Like many another less than brilliant but moneyed men of my generation, I’ve always invested in more than a few of the constant stream of steam-driven innovations of the Empire. Whatever caught my eye, y’know.”

  He put away his knife unhurriedly. Rose practiced mute acceptance of waiting.

  “I can’t remember just now how Straker and I first got thrown together, but we found soon enough that we liked each other. Trust. That’s what it is, above all; we trust each other. We once got around to talking investments of an evening, and we were in my rooms at the time, so of course I hauled out all my share certificates and notes of hand and receipts—no doubt you’ve seen plenty, and know how grand they look, all printed up with blazons and engraved scenes of towers soaring to the stars and fleets of airships crowding the sky and suchlike.”

  He chuckled. “Straker sorted through them in a trice, told me I had three worthwhile investments out of the lot and two more that might break even—and that all the rest were dross. He heaped them up, swept them aside, and told me I should consider that money lost to me but keep them in the faint, faint hope that we could both be pleasantly surprised by a ship coming in or a dead nag somehow finishing first. He told me that what I was buying was hope, and some of those selling it were out-and-out swindlers and liars, and others were deluded by their own hopes. My good bets, he said, were just that: good bets. My bad ones were … foolish wagers.”

  “Good heavens,” Rose said faintly. “I inherited cases and cases of grand-looking shares from Father. I’ve looked through them, but…”

  “Well, if I were you, I’d let our mutual friend Lord Tempest look them over. You see, I took him up on a wager that night: we’d haul them all out again in a year and see if he’d been right. If he was wrong, he’d pay me double the amount he was out by, in gold bars—don’t ask me where he intended to come by them—but if he was right, I’d take his guidance eight times out of ten in my investments thereafter. Well, he was right on every count, of course, and just between you and me, I’ve been guided by him every time I’ve laid out money since—and I’ve done quite well.”

  “So far,” Rose cautioned.

  “Indeed, but ‘so far’ has been seventeen years now, and I’ve made the proverbial pots of money. Particularly in the mass steam-cooking of meals, hams, sides of beef—and the steam-cleaning of rugs, linens, and clothes as a byproduct of factory-machinery steam emissions.” He sat up and added proudly, “Doing the clothes was actually my notion, so Jack invested in me—and rode the men we hired hard when they tried to do sideline work on our coins and hand us the costs, too. He’s not just a toff; he can let fly with his fists in alleys with the best—ah, against the worst—of them.”

  Rose studied Hardcastle with increasing interest. “And are you more comfortable with the toffs, or in the alleys?”

  “Left to myself, the toffs, every time. It’s what I was reared to, you see. Clubs and hunting, riding, and shooting. But standing at the elbow of Jack Straker has shown me alleyways enough to see, well, the bones of the Empire, what all the rest stands on. Lord Tempest is Jack Straker, and Jack Straker isn’t all that far from a dockworker or a miner—except for his brilliant brain and how he uses it. He cares.”

  “You admire him.”

  “How could I not? He’s … beyond envy. I just watch the fire and fun, and feel honored to know him. We’ve been as thick as thieves for a long time, now. Every man needs a confidant, even those sworn to secrecy, and we’ve been that for each other. Though he kept every hint of his work on this Iron Assassin hidden from me until he demonstrated it at Lessingham’s, he did!”

  “Well … perhaps he thought it might all come to nothing, and so was better kept secret until it, ah, flourished.”

  “Perhaps,” Hardcastle replied, sounding unconvinced. Then he leaned forward to peer sharply at Rose, and asked, “So, now, you tell me: what d’you think about this business here and now, with seemingly half the sinister sorts in the Emp
ire thinking up deviltry against the Lord Lion?”

  Rose shrugged. “Those born to wealth can be as spiteful as anyone else, and too many of them measure their worth in small and petty victories over those they wish to tear down. Unlike those whose hours are filled with work, they have time enough to indulge their … unpleasantness to others. I’ve heard the gossip, and have come to suspect that the Dowager Duchess is probably behind all of these machinations against the Prince Royal.”

  Hardcastle smiled wryly. “Well, she’s spiteful enough, I’ll give you that. But I’ve met her, and I’d peg her as small-minded and lazy, too. Incapable of subtle organization or sustained drive. Moreover, I’ve overheard both Tempest and Harkness—he’s the top beagle; forgive my presumption if you already know that—say they believe Lady Roodcannon and—or perhaps it’s ‘or,’ but they’re both leaning towards ‘and’—the heads of the Ancient Order of Tentacles are manipulating the Duchess.”

  Rose’s eyebrows rose. Her escort was more than a good-natured and gallant thickhead, for all his simple-soul manner. Being a Sworn Sword certainly meant you encountered interesting people. Increasingly interesting …

  Through the window came the sudden crunch of carriage wheels—and hooves—on gravel. Rose hastily got up and went into the other room to peer through the sheers covering its bay window.

  A window that afforded a view of the graveled turning circle before the front doors of Foxden. Seeing all arrivals was, after all, part of her job. The lamps flanking the doors were lit, and in their glow she beheld a closed coach, drawn by horses. Two women who looked on the saucy side, and also familiar with Foxden, alighted.

  “Time for me to play at being lady doctor,” Rose murmured, and started for the door.

  “‘Play’?” Hardcastle asked gently.

  Rose froze, abruptly aware that she’d given the game away and remembering Tempest’s warning that his friend Hardcastle didn’t know either of them were Sworn Swords—and mustn’t learn as much from her.

  “Lady Rose?”

  “I—I must go,” she said hurriedly, and rushed off down the passage. Only to hear his swift footfalls behind her.

  She stopped and turned, and Mister Bleys Hardcastle came to a hasty halt mere inches from slamming into her.

  They stood nose to nose for a moment, looking into each other’s eyes.

  “It’s all right,” he murmured, as if he was soothing an upset younger sister. “So you’re one of them, too. A Sword. Like Jack. Be at ease, Lady; I’ve known all about that for years. I don’t let on, because it’s easier for us both. For the three of us, now. Worry not; your secret is safe with me.”

  “I … thank you,” Rose told him, and meant it. “Thank you. Yet I must go.”

  “Of course,” he agreed, bowing his head and waving her off down the passage like a flamboyant butler. “Scream if you need me.”

  * * *

  “I’ve about decided,” Jack Straker told his old friend wearily, “that I’ve seen enough of the peeling paint up there. Somewhere above us, the roof of Tower Street Station leaks.”

  He rolled onto one hip with a groan of pain, stepped down off the table—and promptly crashed headlong to the floor.

  Standish rushed to him and hauled him upright. Straker groaned again.

  “You’ve been burned and hurled a good distance by an explosion,” the beagle reminded him grimly. “Flesh and blood, not steam-driven pistons and clockwork, remember?”

  “I create things,” Straker panted, standing only by virtue of the arm he had around Standish’s shoulders, “and discover things. Just now, I’ve discovered—the hard way—that I’m too badly hurt to even walk without assistance. Damn it.”

  “Chair,” Standish replied curtly, pointing across the room, and started helping him in that direction.

  Behind them, the door banged open, and a young beagle who was panting in his haste burst into the room.

  “Chief Inspector, sir! Doings in Knightsbridge! The Lord Tempest’s rooms have been ransacked! I—oh.” The beagle had just seen the face of the man crumpling gratefully into the chair, and recognized the very peer he’d just mentioned.

  He looked to Standish uncertainly for orders.

  Standish looked at Tempest. “Was there anything there the Order—or anyone else—shouldn’t get to see?”

  “Yes,” Tempest snapped, and tried to struggle to his feet. Only to sag back with a groan of pain.

  “Get word to Hardcastle,” he gasped. “Tell him I need the blue steamer trunk. The metal one with the three big brass bull’s-eye locks. He doesn’t know it, but he has custody of my prototype exoskeleton, the first one I fashioned for the Silent Man project. I made it to fit me, so I could try things out and tinker with it. Now, it’s going to help me walk.”

  * * *

  Lady Rose Harminster reached the front doors of Foxden just as four armed guards—dressed in livery, to seem footmen—opened it to admit the two arrivals. Who promptly screamed as someone loomed up out of the night, rushing for the door with frightening speed. Someone familiar—the dead-faced man who lurched, and whose limbs were encaged in metal!

  Even as fear rose crawlingly within her, the coachman and the guards all fired at the lurching man, blazing away repeatedly—as more guards came pounding down several passages, converging on the hall inside the front doors.

  At the head of one group of guards ran Malmerston the butler, lugging some sort of weapon. Or rather, he held the aiming part of it, which looked like a long fire nozzle or a shiny silver blunderbuss, and guards right behind him cradled a hose running from it to a large tank with massive projecting handles that six guards were hefting along.

  As the Iron Assassin staggered up to the threshold, one arm up to shield his face as if all the bullets and balls striking him were so much slanting rain, Malmerston did something to what he was holding—and it belched out a long jet of flame!

  It alone gave the Iron Assassin pause. He backed away, batting clumsily at the flames with both arms, then turned slowly and lurched away into the night.

  The coachman stepped into his path, to try to stop him—and got smashed to the ground like a rag doll, his skull crushed with one mighty roundhouse swing that left his brains spattered on the gravel.

  The two women who’d come in the coach shrieked wildly.

  Malmerston gave Lady Rose a curious look, and she realized she’d drawn the gun the Prince Royal had given her and was holding it up and ready, pointed at the ceiling, in case of immediate need.

  “In, ladies,” she and the butler said in unison, then exchanged half-amused looks.

  “You, Lady Harminster,” Malmerston murmured, “have been deceiving me. You’re rather more than a lady doctor, and even more than the simple spy I took you for. You’re a Sworn Sword.”

  “Mister Malmerston!” she protested, with a wink. “You took me for a simple spy? Whatever next?”

  That startled a smile out of him.

  OCTEMBER 9

  The fast carriage was experimental—and very noisy—but the jets of scalding steam it emitted almost constantly not only cleared the streets of anyone afoot who might be reluctant to get out of the way of a speeding beagle carriage but also softened the jolting of rushing wheels on cobbles.

  For which Lord Tempest, still feeling his burns and bruises, had been heartily thankful. Word of his need had been taken to Foxden, Hardcastle had brought his original exoskeleton to Tower Street, and now the carriage had just jolted to a hissing halt and they were all—that is, the pair of them, Standish, and a brace of beagles he’d ordered along—alighting outside his ransacked Knightsbridge rooms.

  It was almost comical, the way they hesitated and hawed over helping an injured lord up the stairs. Perhaps they were wary of the exoskeleton he now wore, and what it might do. They did, after all, taste more danger from dangerously faulty new inventions and deliberately deadly steam-driven weapons, traps, and gewgaws than most citizens of the Empire, to be sure …

&nb
sp; So Lord Tempest led the way into his own rooms, the exoskeleton he now wore attracting some curious looks from the beagles who’d been left to guard his door, and was soon pleased to discover that whoever had turned his digs upside down had found nothing critical.

  “They did a thorough job,” Standish commented, peering at what was strewn on the floor.

  “Very,” Straker replied dryly. “However, what they were sent to find eluded them.”

  “You’re certain of that?”

  “Very,” Straker repeated, “for it’s all here.” He went to the doorway into the bedroom, reached up and tugged at the top of the doorframe—and that polished piece of molding came away in his hands. He put it into the grasp of the nearest startled beagle, took hold of the two uprights of the doorframe, and lifted them away from the walls—to reveal a tall, narrow, dark recess on either side of the threshold.

  “The top piece acts as a wedge, and the side plates sit in recesses in the threshold, and so can’t budge at the bottom.”

  He drew forth two thin books—which proved not to be books at all but book covers glued to thin wooden frames that held “some of my Investigator Royal stuff; evidence awaiting future use” and “what they were after: some of the tools I fashioned while animating and controlling the Iron Assassin.” Sliding the two book frames between his feet to free his hands, Tempest reassembled the doorframe and said, “Board the place up in case they decide to start another fire and let’s go.”

  “Go?”

  “Back to examine what’s left of Iolanthe,” Tempest explained, a little wearily.

  “Before she starts to smell,” Standish muttered.

  Tempest shrugged. “So many stenches have arisen regarding this affair before her unfortunate demise, and now crowd close, that one more reek hardly makes a difference.”