The Iron Assassin Read online

  Lady Rose Harminster knelt in rather undignified haste to put her skirts up, straightened to crow in several deep breaths, then balled her hands into fists, put her head down, and charged across the terrace and the sward beyond after the furious young heir.

  Something had to be said, and right now his father was the last person suitable to say it. Which made it her duty …

  The younger Lord Sefton was evidently an active man. He certainly had wind and vigor enough to outdistance her, and probably would have done so had she been hampered by no skirts at all. Wherefore he vanished into the folly when she was barely halfway to it.

  She slowed her run long enough to draw in a proper breath, then started sprinting up the hill.

  Being ladylike was vastly overrated.

  * * *

  Whitehall was not at ease, for Halworthy Burton was simmering. Summoning law clerks and demanding to know exactly what could be done under the law to control the private hobbies of nobles of the realm, sending a messenger to the Commissioner of the Queen’s High Constabulary to attend him at once, and sending yet another messenger to the Imperial Herald of the Realm to see if a lord could be stripped of his title for insanity, and, if so, could he begin doing so at once!

  The normally staid and hushed halls hummed with activity and echoed with excited whisperings.

  If Jack Straker, Lord Tempest, had been there, he’d have found it all highly amusing.

  As it was, he was elsewhere, and worrying about more pressing matters than his own neck.

  And, from time to time, in snatched moments, amusing himself by imagining the sort of splashings and slowly bubbling descent the likes of Halworthy Burton would make, if tied to a chair, gagged with his own shiny shoes thrust deep into his mouth, and then tossed into the Thames.

  * * *

  Algernon Hartworth turned, face still crimson and furious, drawing in breath for a roaring verbal parry of his father, and took a stride to meet the expected foe.

  Which meant the winded Lady Rose Harminster almost fell into his arms as she reeled up the folly’s broad stone steps. He cradled her awkwardly, in deep astonishment and sudden embarrassed realization that one of his arms was wrapped around a tightly corseted waist, and the other frankly—if gingerly—cradled a pleasantly rounded bosom.

  “L-Lady Harminster! This is, uh, quite a surprise, to be sure! Are you unwell? In need?”

  “In need, yes,” the woman in his arms gasped, turning to lean into his shoulder with her own. He accepted the adroit rearrangement with relief, for it gave both his hands safer yet pleasant locations to grasp; her hips. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Me? But—that is, I am your servant, and happy to help in any way I can, but my father—”

  “Is a stalwart of the Empire, but just now, a rock of stubbornness that irks you greatly,” Lady Rose panted. “It is of that I would speak.”

  His brows drew down. “Forgive me, Lady, but within families—”

  “Oh, I don’t wish to discuss any specifics of your dealings with your father. That is, as you rightly point out, your own business and not mine. I want to speak to you now as noble to noble, about our common duty.”

  “Duty?”

  Lady Harminster sighed. “Your father has been remiss. He should speak frankly with you more often, as nobleman to nobleman, lord to heir. About the duties we nobles share, among other things. Tell me, what do you know of current Empire politics?”

  Algernon Hartworth gaped at her, then shook his head as if to clear it, and said, “Precious little. Not far from nothing at all. Aren’t we nobles above all that?”

  “Would that it were so. No, Lord. Remember this, if you heed nothing else I say to you today: if one does not do politics, politics will be done to one.”

  “Heh. Clever, that. All right, duly noted. Now, what’s all this about duty and all the things you’re going to say to me today?”

  The lady who was his near neighbor and, he recalled suddenly, now the head of her house, though she was far younger than his father, opened her mouth to reply … and then hesitated.

  They studied each other, and Algernon was moved to burst out, “But I forget my manners! Do please forgive me; I was most vexed, and temporarily forgot courtesy. Will you sit?”

  He offered her one of the grandly curving but less than comfortable stone seats—copies of cathedral pews, he happened to know—with a flourish.

  Gratefully, she sat and thanked him. He nodded in the manner of his father, and sat down on the seat facing her. She had magnificent legs, he could not help but notice; she must have fastened up her skirts to run after him.

  Hmph. No woman had run after him since the nannies of his childhood. He discovered he quite liked it.

  “You must have a basic grasp of the politics of the Empire, my lord,” she told him gravely. “So I’ll endeavor to provide one, and you must not take offense if you know all of this already. So … matters in the Empire are politically delicate, just now. Difficult, if you will. In Parliament, the Crown Anarchists, led by Mister Simon Morrowpyke, vie with the Old Bulls—”

  “Led by Lord Basil Cantlemere!” Algernon interrupted triumphantly. “Our party!”

  “The party of the establishment, yes. The Old Bulls want no change at all and are already locked in bitter battles over innovation and steam-driven this and cog-propelled that, new ways and new machines that cost manual laborers more and more jobs.”

  “The rash and fool-headed ‘down with nobles and the Crown, too’ malcontents versus the ‘good old England, let it change not’ stalwarts; this much I do know.”

  “Then what can you tell me, Lord, of the New and Pleasant Land Party?”

  “The what? Nothing; never heard of it!”

  “Well, then, be advised that the two old parliamentary foes you’re familiar with are now challenged by a third party, led by Mister Darcy Dunslade. The New Landers are pushing for rule not by Queen and Parliament, but by an Electoral College of Esteemed Inventors.”

  “And what the steam-driven devil is that?”

  “A ruling council to which each guild chooses and appoints its representative. So, guild rule.”

  “What? Ruled by the Rivermen? And the Dungcarters?”

  “And the Airship Guild, the Steam Artificers’ Guild, the Steamship Guild, the Smelters and Miners’ Fellowship…”

  Algernon groaned. “And the cobblers and scent makers and all! Now that is madcap foolery, to be sure! Tradesmen, running the Empire! It’ll be an eye-gouging, throat-slitting, up-elbows-all race to see who can snatch the most coins and strip the common cupboard bare!”

  Surprisingly, Lady Harminster grinned. It made her look much younger.

  “You do politics with commendable fire, sir.”

  “I’m told I do everything with overmuch fire, these days,” he replied dryly. “Yet this is the first I’ve heard doing so is ‘commendable.’”

  His visiting neighbor leaned forward, her gaze earnest. “Young men and women are always full of energy and new ideas—and scorn for what their parents believe and hold dear. Always. Your father stormed out of disputes with his father, just as you have now.”

  Her voice was rising, her eyes were afire. Algernon almost recoiled. Almost.

  “But what has endured, what must endure, is the Empire itself,” she told him fiercely. “The prosperity and stability—even through the fires of constant change—our shared endeavors and experiences earn us. You will hear foolish and complacent folk say the vast and mighty Empire is too big to fail, that it cannot help but go on, perhaps forever, but that isn’t so. There have been empires before—the Greeks, the Romans—and there will be empires again. They only last when fought for, and constantly repaired and renewed and improved, and that is the work we who hold titles and lands and privilege are suited for. That striving is our duty. Especially in these days, with the Queen ailing and in seclusion, kept alive with—”

  “I know, I know,” Algernon broke in, a little unsettled by her i
ntensity. Something was rising inside him that made him feel like crying. “Old Crowned Steamheart. Or Ironheart—they call her that, too. Alexandrina Gloriana Hanover, Queen Victoria the Third. The direct Third, in a row. An invalid kept alive with steam-driven bellows as lungs and a steam-driven pump for a heart, so the Prince Royal has unofficially but effectively been ruling the Empire for years, now, giving orders to the Sky Admiralty and the Sea Admiralty, dispensing titles and favors and estates and annuities as if he was King.”

  “Then you know we nobles are all like the knights of old: we are the heart of the Empire, and its strength is in our arms and brains. The Lord Lion is but one man, and a target wherever he goes to the foes of the Empire. He cannot be everywhere—so our vigilance must be.”

  Lady Harminster ran out of breath then, and they both discovered they were on their feet, staring at each other hard and bright-eyed.

  It was almost fashionable among the nobility to decry the call of Empire, to smilingly dismiss any hint of patriotism. Whence had come this sudden flame? They could see it in each other’s eyes, stirring, unlooked for … almost frightening.

  As Rose panted for air, the younger Lord Sefton did not rush to fill the silence. Rather, he stared back at her thoughtfully.

  “Tell me, Algernon Hartworth,” she ventured softly, “what do you know of the lands beyond the Empire?”

  “Little enough. Fancies, tales of rutting and high escapades told by older lords, wildness about massacres and temples full of idols and mountains of gold,” he said dismissively. Then took a step toward her and asked urgently, “So what can you tell me of them?”

  “Well, I’ve been there no more than you have,” she admitted. “A few Paris clubs, some vineyards and shipyards visited with Father when he…”

  She sighed, waved away happy memories and the fresh grief that overlaid them with a brisk arm, and told him, “Europe is a patchwork quilt of independent vest-pocket duchies and principalities and grand duchies, across which the three great powers glower at each other: our own Empire of the Lion; the rapier-wielding dandies of the slave-taking Empire of Amirondro, who rose from the warring territories of Spain to hold much of the Mediterranean and northern Afrikka; and the Rajahirate Empire, which is every bit as large and wealthy as the Lands of the Lion; the rajahs hold sway over all the jungle lands east and south of the Deserts of the Shahs. Agents of these three powers skulk and murder everywhere, even here.”

  “Here?”

  “Oh, yes. They must do. You’ve heard of the season wars?”

  “Of course. Every summer, there’s fighting somewhere. Several somewheres, small and exotic and far away. Savages fight; it’s the way of savages. What of them?”

  “Tell me, Algernon: why is there never a season war here in England?”

  He stared at her. “Here? Well, of course not! We’re civilized, we are! We—”

  “Would be at each other’s throats in a trice, if agents were not working tirelessly to prevent open strife. Agents like your father.”

  The Sefton heir gave her a look of amused and utter incredulity. It made him look like a supercilious frog. “My father, some sort of skulking spy? Forgive me, my lady, but don’t be ridiculous! My father has the skulking subtlety of a rutting bull!”

  “Oh, I did not mean to say that Lord Sefton is a spy. I have no idea what, in particular, he does to keep the Empire strong and united, and its folk grumbling rather than taking up arms. But he does do something; my Father told me so. And when the passing years take your father to his rest in the yonder crypt, it will be your turn to make a difference, year in and year out.”

  Algernon Hartworth stared at her, face flushed, eyes glittering, as if he knew what was coming.

  “So tell me, Algernon,” she asked him softly. “When that time comes, will you be ready?”

  He gaped at her—and then exploded in tears, sobbing uncontrollably, rushing forward into her arms to weep against her breast like a small boy blindly seeking comfort from his mother.

  Then in the next instant, he tore free of her, stammering apologies and the urgent and pressing need to take his leave of her in confused incoherence, spun about, and pelted down the hill the way he’d come, running as if all the Furies were at his heels.

  * * *

  “That should hold him!” the older beagle said with some satisfaction, as the echoes of rattling chain died away at last.

  Inside the old but massive cage, the dead-looking head turned to give him a sneering, drooping smile.

  “Willum,” the younger beagle asked fearfully, “we don’t happen to have more locks anywhere about, do we?”

  “I’ll go look,” the older beagle said eagerly.

  “And I’ll go with you!” the younger one blurted out, backing away from the cage.

  The dead-looking man inside the cage gave them both another smile, and with one accord they turned and ran.

  * * *

  Rose watched Algernon Hartworth dwindle and then disappear across the terrace and back inside the great house.

  And then she sighed a great sigh, turned away, and trudged almost blindly back to the seat he’d offered her.

  She felt suddenly very tired. Drained. She had probably failed, and shamed him, so henceforth he’d avoid her and his duty both, and …

  She should go.

  So much for playing the wise old head of a noble house. That had not gone well. No, she should avoid ever doing anything so foolishly forward, ever again. Yet there was this fire in her, that once kindled—

  A discreet cough from mere feet away brought her up short. Almost breathless.

  “Lady Rose Harminster.” A man’s voice addressed her, both kindly and grave. “I am honored to make your acquaintance. And even more honored to have heard your address to that fortunate young scion. That was magnificent.”

  She looked up, appalled. She’d been overheard? Oh, Lord …

  And by the Lord Chamberlain of the Empire, no less!

  Bertram Buckingham was leaning around a corner of the stone folly walls and beaming at her. And, now, extending a courtly arm in her direction.

  “Lady,” he asked, “will you walk with me?”

  Lost for words, Rose nodded and took his arm. Smoothly, he turned, leading her away from the folly, in the direction of the Barnstaple estate.

  She couldn’t help but notice two stone-faced, burly, impeccably dark-suited men were following at a discreet distance, idly waving walking sticks she recognized as being both firearms and swordcanes. Her father had been presented with one shortly before his death; a Wise & Sollers “Enforcer.”

  Oh, dear. What had her tongue gotten her into?

  “You spoke to that young man of duty,” the Lord Chamberlain murmured, seeming to address his words to the trees ahead of them. “Forgive me, but I could not help but overhear. How did you learn of Lord Sefton’s service to the Crown?”

  Rose flushed. “I didn’t. I know nothing of it. Yet it’s obvious that all lords and ladies who are … reliable … must serve the Crown, or it could not endure.”

  “I wish it was as obvious to more lords and ladies of the Empire. And that a few more of them were, ah, reliable, as you so aptly put it. The Empire stands now in dire need of such service.”

  They walked on, arm in arm, climbing the rolling Sefton meadows and heading for the woods that cloaked the boundary where the Sefton and Barnstaple estates met. Rose did not have to glance back to know that the two men were still behind them. She’d espied others ahead of them, waiting in the trees.

  “I begin to anticipate your interest in strolling the landscape with the unmarried head of a minor noble house,” Rose dared to murmur.

  “Then I’ll not insult you with dalliance or euphemisms, Lady Harminster. I am here to recruit you to the service of the Crown, if you’ll agree to serve.”

  “Serve how, exactly?”

  “Have you ever heard of the Investigators Royal?”

  With their arms linked, she could not conceal
the stiffening of her body as excitement leaped within her like an eager flame, or rampant lion. Well, lioness …

  “Investigator Royal,” she murmured. “Dread Agent of the Tower, and Sworn Sword of the Lion.”

  “All of those, yes.” He sounded amused.

  “Lord Buckingham, I must confess I am astonished, but also thrilled. I accept!”

  He chuckled. “Without knowing the drudgery, the danger, the paltry pay?”

  “Without,” she told him firmly. “So, how does one go about becoming an Investigator Royal? Is there a vigil? A branding?”

  “Good heavens! The young harbor strange notions, indeed, these days! No, I assure you, nothing so … medieval.”

  A few strides later, he added, “Well, there is one medieval skill that will prove useful: the guarding of one’s tongue.”

  “I swear to do so.”

  “Ah, yes, the oath. We’ll get to that.”

  They came out of a path through the trees into a higher meadow, and he observed dryly, “Should anyone ask you what the two of us were doing together, here, you are to say you’ve been telling me about your favorite local walking routes.”

  “Understood, Lord.”

  In unspoken accord they paused together to enjoy the view. In one direction, across rolling meadows framed and studded with woodlots, they looked down on the village of Bishop’s Bottom.

  In the other was the Thames. Not all that far off at all, really, and starting just there, the filthy, crowded, fast-growing city of London. Smoke-shrouded, its sky filled with airships large and small, buildings beyond counting rising along the banks of the great river in a forest of steel and sooty stone spires, cathedrals mingling with the newer iron latticework mooring masts of the airships.

  “The greatest city in the world,” the Lord Chamberlain murmured, “and the greatest pit of vipers, too.”

  “What is most troubling you, Lord?” Rose asked him quietly.

  He turned to meet her eyes. His were butter-brown and full of concern. “I must admit that I’m less than comfortable recruiting you. The work is apt to be dangerous.”