The Iron Assassin Read online

  Before either could reply, the door between them was flung wide. Their halberds came up in swift menace—and were struck aside by a bared and ready sword whose wielder wore a war gauntlet of ancient style, a splendid tabard, and a glower that outdid Hawkingbrooke’s own. It was old Throckmorton, the Imperial Herald.

  “Away steel!” he snapped. “All be obedient before His Royal Highness Frederick Villiers Hanover, Lord Lion of the Empire, Prince Royal of England and Its Dominions Low and High, Sword of the Seas and Defender of the Two Faiths, and Most Dread Lord of London!”

  Throckmorton was a short man; over his gilded shoulders, everyone in the room could see a familiar trim-bearded face behind him, piercing blue eyes outshining the three sapphires in the circlet upon the Prince Royal’s brows. They all went to their knees in hasty unison.

  “Rise, all of you,” the Lord Lion said rather wearily, as he lowered himself into the vacant seat at the head of the long table. “I’ve seen enough bowed heads this day. Hawkingbrooke, I’m told Langford is dead. Is this true?”

  “It is, Majesty,” the gray-bearded Lord Guardian said curtly. “Spattered all over a rooftop in Lambeth. Fallen from the skies. Most likely from the last flight to Calais, yestereve.”

  “Pushed.”

  “By someone he dragged with him, yes. A Tentacles agent, by the looks of the gore—and the lack of a body.”

  “One who got his hands fouled, indeed,” Lady Iolanthe Hailsham said in dark satisfaction. “I doubt his stomach was strong enough.”

  “I’m sure knowing that will comfort Langford’s daughters deeply,” the scarred man sitting beside her rasped.

  “Lord Gaunt,” Lady Iolanthe said sharply, “I will comfort John Langford’s daughters, tonight and henceforth. Before both altars and all men, I’ll be their sponsor and their guardian, too, if they’ll have me.”

  The Lord Lion sighed. “It will be years, if ever, before they’re ready to serve the Empire as their father did. No trail, I presume?”

  “Our best men are searching all Lambeth right now, Majesty,” Gaunt said shortly. “Thus far, we’ve found these.”

  He pointed down the table at two small and gleaming things that sat on a cloth in front of a gloomy-looking Lord Winter.

  “One under what was left of Langford, caught in his clothing,” Hawkingbrooke added. “The other in a roof gutter, where it might end up if someone slid—or was dragged—”

  “Dripped,” Gaunt murmured.

  “—over the edge of the roof.”

  The Lord Lion might have been in the waning days of his thirty-first year, but there was nothing at all yet wrong with either his eyes or his wits.

  “Buttons from a Household Guardsman’s uniform. So if your best men are searching Lambeth, who’s taking a look at all of them?”

  “Richmond,” the Lord Guardian replied, “and he should be reporting back to us here any moment now. He—”

  A commotion arose outside the door. The thunder of boots, rapidly approaching at a run, one man—

  The door banged open again, but this time the guards were ready with their halberds. The man they nearly spitted recoiled from them and almost fell, shouting, “Majesty! All of you! Carrington and the Seneschal are both Tentacles men and got away from us, clean! They’re—”

  His wild gaze fell upon the two guardsmen barring his way, and he sprang back, pointing frantically. “These two I’ve not yet—”

  The halberds swung away from him in a flash of sharp war steel that became a swift and wordless charge across the room.

  Right at the Lord Lion’s back.

  “’Ware, Your Majesty!” Hawkingbrooke roared, hurling himself in front of one halberd—and taking it full in the chest—as the Lord Lion sprang up out of his chair in a frantic dive forward, landing on his stomach on the table and sliding along it.

  The gleaming imperial boots kicked at the vacated chair to launch the Lord Lion on his way, knocking it back into the shins of the second charging guardsman—who stumbled, halberd swinging high.

  Under it hurtled Lord Gaunt, slamming hard into the face of the charging traitor, fists up and punching.

  The two men crashed into the edge of the table together, halberd clanging as it tumbled away and they punched, shoved, and struggled.

  A struggle that ended in a sudden spasmodic flailing as the Lady Iolanthe’s silver-bladed dagger sank hilt-deep into the guardsman’s ear. Two frantic seconds after she’d torn it out of the gore-spurting right eye socket of the other guardsman, who had taken just a moment too long trying to yank his halberd out of the groaning, dying Lord Hawkingbrooke.

  Who in turn gave one last choking gurgle—and expired. Sudden silence fell.

  Sir Richmond, the Lords Gaunt and Winter, and the Lord Lion all used it to do the same thing.

  To stare at Lady Iolanthe Hailsham.

  As she wiped her dagger clean on the blood-spattered uniform of one Household Guardsman, then planted one button-booted foot on the seat of a handy chair, calmly hiked her skirts up to her waist to reveal the empty dagger sheath strapped to that leg flanking her garters, and slid her little silver fang back into its home again.

  “Lady,” the Lord Lion said a little breathlessly, the moment those skirts had safely returned to the vicinity of their wearer’s ankles, “you’ve done us great service.”

  Steady gray eyes met his.

  “Not yet, Majesty,” their owner replied, “but I fear I may soon have to.” She sighed. “Like Hawkingbrooke here.”

  She looked from his sprawled dead body to the two just as lifeless Tentacles agents. “How many more serpents are there in our midst, I wonder?”

  “We’re going to have to do a lot more than wonder,” Gaunt growled, nursing a halberd-sliced forearm, “and soon. Or we’ll all be dead, and this’ll be the Empire of the Tentacles.”

  OCTEMBER 2

  “Pray observe,” Straker announced, “the box.”

  He turned the crank on the block of wood he was holding, one slow revolution and then many faster ones, building into a whir. The metal hub of the crank clacked repeatedly with well-oiled, smoothly machined confidence, and occasional sparks spat from various places along the wire linking it to the upright box.

  From within which there came a muffled chime.

  Straker stopped cranking, set the block of wood down on the floor, and stepped back from it, waving both hands at the box in the “Behold!” flourish of a traveling conjurer.

  The box responded with a muffled yet distinct thud, then another.

  And then its hinged lid was thrust open from within, and a man lurched unsteadily out, striding with the leaning confidence of a drunkard.

  More than one hand in the Havilstoke Room promptly clenched hard around the head of a stick or balled into a fist.

  The man was clad in the black, many-straps leathers that knights on horse at imperial weddings and funerals wore under their great, gleaming coat-of-plate ceremonial armor. What could be seen of his body looked dead, his hair-shedding head mere shrunken skin over a skull that still had eyes. His hands and feet were bare, the fingers and toes sheathed in silver-coated iron points.

  “Gentlemen,” Straker said proudly, “meet Steelforce. Mister Bentley Steelforce. My prototype Iron Assassin. Outside this room, we call him the Silent Man.”

  Steelforce nodded, slowly and deliberately, lifting his dead lips to bare his teeth in a grotesque smile. Then he started toward the table.

  His steps were stiff and slow, and as he came, he turned his head almost mechanically to stare at one seated man and then another. Small wonder, that machinelike quality; over his leathers was fitted a cagelike iron frame, an exoskeleton that glowed with tiny crawling lightnings and gave off sparks whenever its joints bent severely.

  “Does … does it talk?” Burton of Whitehall blurted out, horror warring openly with revulsion on his face.

  “Good … day … Mister Burton,” the walking dead man replied coldly.

  Then he shud
dered, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he froze.

  Straker snapped his fingers.

  The Silent Man made that ghastly smile again, and his eyes slowly descended to regard the men staring at him.

  “Excuse me,” he said tonelessly. “I was … scenting.” He looked at Straker. “There are no Tentacles men near. However, more than one of these men has touched a Tentacles man recently.”

  Straker nodded. “And so?”

  “I follow, watch, and learn. Not attacking. Yet.”

  Straker nodded again. “Indeed,” he said, his voice holding satisfaction.

  “Is this man dead?” Lord Staunton asked quietly.

  “He is, Lord, yet now lives again, and is content to do so,” Straker replied. “In life, he was Bentley Roper, chimney sweep. Killed when he fell off a roof in Hampstead. His wife and children are now provided for, and he is proud to serve the Empire of the Lion.”

  “I see no steam bellows, no vents,” Standish barked. “No boiler or firebox, and unless you’ve been uncommonly clever, no room to hide ’em. So how does he move?”

  “As you’ve just seen, he moves himself.”

  “So is he a man,” Standish growled, “or a machine?”

  Steelforce’s head turned in the policeman’s direction, and Standish fancied he saw a momentary glow of blue-white current behind those dark, liquid eyes. He fought to repress a shudder.

  “He remembers something of his living past, to be sure,” Straker murmured. “As to how much…” He lifted his shoulders in a gentle shrug. “More when he’s warmed up and active, and the current’s surging through him, to be sure.”

  “The current?” Burton snapped. “Like the flow of the Thames?”

  “Yes,” Straker replied, “and no. This current causes wires to glow and Steelforce to move, to come to life for a time. If too strong, it kills.”

  He waved at the crank on the floor. “This is merely for demonstration purposes. A velocipede, upended to make it stationary, could be pedaled in harness with this generator I’ve cobbled together—here, beneath the crank—to generate far more electricity, and do so more quickly and steadily. Not every assassin would have to be accompanied by a man with a crank.”

  “Assassin,” Lord Staunton echoed thoughtfully. “Mister Steelforce kills Tentacles agents?”

  “He does. Six so far.” Straker pointed. “Observe his fingers and toes. Capped in cold iron coated in silver. With these he burns … prey. When he grips them, and unleashes some of his electricity to course through these points, some of the silver—poison to one who’s drunk the consecration cup of the Ancient Order—floods through them in an instant, searing them from within. He also has forearm bracers fitted with many blades of cold iron and of silver, for intense fighting.”

  “A dead man made to walk,” Burton muttered. “Lunacy. Your crowning lunacy thus far, Straker.”

  “Perhaps. Yet have you a better weapon? The Tentacles men grow bolder by the day. How many is it now they’ve killed, Standish? Six hundred some?”

  “Four thousand two hundred and four,” the man from the Yard growled. “As of last official reckoning, two mornings ago. The majority of another sixty-three ‘possibles’ will probably, in time, be added to that.”

  Straker regarded Burton. “Well?”

  “Latest estimates are over six thousand,” came the grim reply. “The Ancient Order is not confined to London, gentlemen.”

  “Good God,” Hardcastle gasped, unable to stop himself. “Six thousand? And you’ve not told us?”

  Burton’s glare was stern. “Sir, the figures have been withheld from the press to avoid a general panic. The last time London knew real fear—as you should recall—there were dozens of murders, countless accusations, shops burned, and beatings in the streets. And that was a comparatively tame matter of the infectious crew of just one ship. There is such a thing as social responsibility, young man.”

  “Not that … you’d be … familiar with it,” the dead man said flatly, astonishing them all into silence.

  Lord Staunton recovered first. “How does your Iron Assassin work, exactly, Mister Straker?” he said quickly, waving the end of his swordcane in front of Burton warningly to quell an outburst.

  Straker clapped his hands together in delight at the proffered opportunity and started to pace like a master in a schoolroom.

  “You see, gentlemen, the human brain works by electricity. Little pulses—brain waves, some call them, but in truth they are more like short-lived little bolts of lightning than the waves that crash tirelessly upon our shores day and night—that carry our thoughts, bring back what our eyes see and our ears hear to us, and send back commands from the wits in our skulls, so we move a hand thus or step so rather than flailing about at random—”

  “Poppycock,” Burton snorted, eyes cold above the gleam of his spectacles. “Piffle.”

  The Silent Man slowly and deliberately turned his head to regard Straker.

  Who gave a swift nod.

  Steelforce turned his head again, fixing his gaze on the man from Whitehall. Who sneered back at him, thumbs now hooked into the pockets of his splendid waistcoat, and repeated petulantly, “Piffle, I say.”

  The dead man started to move. His strides were stiff and lumbering, each step pitching his shoulders from side to side like a man hurrying on stilts, but he went around two chairs as deftly as any dancer, picking up speed as he went.

  Around the table in a quickening rush, heading for Burton—whose sneer darkened into a defiant snarl, as he hurriedly plunged his hands inside his waistcoat and drew out a gleaming pistol.

  “Have a care!” he said sharply. “Come closer and I’ll shoot!”

  Not slowing in the slightest, the Silent Man shot out a hand to point accusingly at Halworthy Burton—and from one graying, dead finger leapt a fat blue spark.

  It reached the barrel of the shaking gun and raced around it like quicksilver moonlight.

  Burton shouted in startled pain and dropped the weapon, his arm jerking wildly. That elbow slammed thunderously down on the table before the gun roared, hurling its death into the ceiling as it cartwheeled to the floor.

  Halworthy Burton was not an easily frightened man. He’d fought Rorcristans in Tuscany and faced down the Mad Monks of Dun Abbey, to say nothing of wrestling more than twoscore departmental budgets through the back offices of Whitehall. Yet he looked up, cursing and clutching his elbow, right into a dead face that loomed above him—and went the yellow-white of old bone, jaw quivering in fear.

  “Poppycock,” Steelforce said pleasantly, his decaying nose almost touching Burton’s. “Piffle.”

  In the tense moment of silence that followed, he lifted his dead upper lip in that horrible smile again. And turned away.

  After one long step back the way he’d come, he bent, plucked up Burton’s pistol from the floor, and set it on the table, thrusting it back at its owner with a flick of his fingers.

  “So this, gentlemen,” Straker said calmly, “is my Iron Assassin. I—”

  A deep, thunderous clack-clack interrupted him, from the door. The knocker.

  “Enter,” Lord Staunton called, and the door was flung open.

  The man in the doorway was panting, quite out of breath.

  “Richmond!” Straker greeted him with delight. “Doesn’t look a bit like Marley, does it?”

  “What? Oh, yes, I see,” the knight gasped. “Grave news! I’ve come to—”

  His eyes, darting around the room to see who was present, lit upon the Iron Assassin and stopped dead.

  “Good God, Straker!” he burst out. “Do you know who your killing man is—or was, I should say, before he—”

  Richmond’s words ended in an abrupt gurgle. Steelforce had crossed the room like a sudden gale to take hold of his throat.

  As everyone in the Havilstoke Room watched, Straker’s newest secret weapon tore out Richmond’s tongue, then calmly twisted the knight’s head around and broke his neck.

 
He gave one last, horrid wrench as the dying man started to topple, then lurched briskly away with Sir Jasper Richmond’s lower jaw dripping in his hand.

  * * *

  “Be damned to you, sir! Damned to you! I’m well aware of the duty a son owes his father, but this is too much! By all the massed bloody airships of the Empire, this is too much!”

  A door slammed so loudly that Lady Rose Harminster winced despite herself. She turned hastily away from the open door into the passage and raised the little prayer book she’d taken from her purse, in an all-too-feeble attempt to pretend she’d been lost in devotions and heard nothing of the argument between the younger and elder Seftons that had shaken the very leaded windows around her these last few moments.

  Lord Sefton was a hardheaded, gruff, pompous old sea lion, all battered red nose, saber scars, and a walrus mustache that would have choked any walrus Lady Rose had ever seen—and his son, Algernon, had inherited his father’s fiery temper but thus far absorbed precious little of his father’s deep understanding of the world. As it truly was, behind all the frippery and ballyhoo of the moment and the simplistic statements about the gilded supremacy of the Empire of the Lion that would last forever.

  She needn’t have bothered with her pretense; Algernon stormed past her open door and on down the passage in a thunder that bespoke his complete insensibility to what was going on around him. She could have set the carpet on fire and danced around it utterly unclad and he wouldn’t have noticed.

  Distant boomings announced the slamming of the door at the end of the passage and then the one on the far side of the drawing room beyond, and, yes, that squeal would be the orontine doors out onto the terrace being flung open in a greater hurry than their hinges had ever known before.

  She sighed, slipped her prayer book away, got to her feet, and hastened out into the passage. She’d have to be quick …

  As it happened, she needn’t have bothered. When she came out onto the terrace fighting for breath—those doors had been heavy—the distant figure of Algernon Hartworth could be seen mounting the grassy hill beyond, heading for the folly that crowned it. He was proceeding straight as an arrow, hands clenched into fists and tailcoat streaming out behind him.