The Iron Assassin Read online

  “Until?”

  “Until he takes you away, or I come for you, or all stream-driven hell breaks loose.”

  Lady Rose nodded. “I believe I can do that.”

  “Good,” Tempest replied briskly, and rose to depart.

  Then he hesitated, cast a look back at her over his shoulder, and asked in quite a different voice, “What were you doing with that pitchfork?”

  “Preparing—probably in futility—to defend myself. There was a man who came before you. A lurching man, who wore metal braces all over the outside of his body that shot sparks and little bolts of lightning. He said I wasn’t the one he sought, and departed.”

  Lord Tempest looked stern. “And where did he go?” he asked sharply.

  “Out there,” she replied helplessly, “into the woods. I—I had to wait here, to meet you.”

  He swore under his breath. “How long ago?”

  “Not long before you came. I think. I was frightened, and not thinking clearly, and may have dozed.”

  The man now pacing impatiently back and forth across the room sighed gustily. “He could be anywhere between Bishop’s Bell and Upper Buckden by now.”

  He strode out of the archway, then turned back to face her just as the lurching man had done. “If you see him again, and he looks like he’s coming for you, his name is Bentley Steelforce. Formerly, he was Bentley Roper. Calling him by either of those names might startle him into turning aside from harming you. Might, I said. To call out to him from afar with either name would be, I believe, foolish.”

  He turned away, took a step, swore again, then came back. “Yet it would be foolish and cruel of me not to tell you the real foes we face. You’ve heard of the Ancient Order of the Tentacles?”

  “Oh, yes. Several ladies of my acquaintance have dabbled with it. The cult that worships a tentacled god. From what they said, I thought it a rather thin excuse for indiscretions.”

  “Indiscretions?”

  “Orgies.”

  Straker nodded. “Those who head the Tentacles today were once the secret service of the first Victoria. Officially disbanded long ago—outlawed, for all the murders they did, for queen and country nonetheless—they now serve the Dowager Duchess. The name they use now derives from their former motto; ‘We endure through adversity. Sever one tentacle, and two more will take its place. We serve still.’ The gullible believe they worship a tentacled god at hidden cellar altars, but the sham cult your acquaintances dallied with has nothing really to do with the Ancient Order of the Tentacles; they merely encourage it to confuse Lion agents with all of its chatter and clandestine meetings and to recruit dupes to serve as fodder in their schemes.”

  “So they seek to do away with the Queen? And the Prince Royal?”

  “Indeed,” he said grimly. “Wherefore they are our true foes. Who are much closer to seizing the throne—the entire Empire—than you might think.”

  He turned and headed out of the folly again.

  “Wait!” she called softly. “When shall I see and hear from you again?”

  “I’ll send word through Hardcastle,” he replied, and was gone.

  * * *

  When he opened the door, the room beyond was in pitch darkness.

  He knew what that meant and stood right where he was, not crossing the threshold.

  “Lady,” he told the darkness gravely, “I am here.”

  “Speak freely,” came the expected voice. Low, throaty, calm, and from the bed. Where she was no doubt not alone. Yet she’d said “freely.” Which meant her bedmate was either deaf or would soon be dead.

  “My lady,” he said, “the quarry’s been seen. In the Barnstaple stables.”

  “Alone?”

  “Alone. We’re watching for any arrivals.”

  “Send the Silent Man. I don’t need the Prince disgraced if I can have him dead. The head is to be brought back to us, mind, with the face intact—or we’ll have decades of ‘the Lord Lion is alive and in hiding, and in the meantime’ shoved down our collective throats.”

  There’d been a faint but sharp intake of breath from the bed, on the heels of her saying “dead.” Her bedmate was more than surprised.

  But then, he soon would be, wouldn’t he?

  He cleared his throat. “Just confirming, ma’am: kill?”

  “Kill, Grimstone.”

  * * *

  Whipsnade stalked on through the darkness of full night, skulking close along rough walls he knew well, a deadly top-hatted and greatcoated shadow wielding a cudgel that could crack a man’s skull with ease. And had, many a time.

  He was not the only shadow walking the streets, but the other shadows left him alone. As he strode deeper into Whitechapel. Heading for the Raging Lion.

  As he turned a corner into Gloucester Street, there came the faintest of scraping sounds from overhead. He took no apparent notice.

  At his next step a cobblestone plummeted down from above—and slammed straight into his head.

  It crushed his top hat flat and sent him reeling, but Whipsnade’s steel skullcap did its job. As a dark and spiderlike figure dropped down behind him on a line, Whipsnade stopped reeling in a grimly satisfied instant and spun around, raising one hand.

  The gun up his sleeve roared, and his assailant’s face vanished in a spurt of blood and a horrid strangling sob. The dead man toppled to the cobbles, knife clattering away.

  Whipsnade unconcernedly reloaded the gun strapped to his arm—ah, but he’d have bruises in the morning—restored his sleeve to its usual trim, and punched his hat back more or less into its proper shape.

  Settling it back on his head, he smiled up into the night above from whence others would be watching, then stalked on.

  Down Gloucester Street, then into a side alley noisome even by Whitechapel standards. A few squelching steps farther, and he was on the threshold of the Lion.

  A scarred face greeted him balefully but melted away upon recognizing him. He stepped into a room so thick with smoke that the publican unshuttered a lantern to illuminate new arrivals.

  And very hastily shuttered it again, muttering, “Pardon.”

  “Accepted,” Whipsnade purred, approaching the bar. Sullen men slouched along it shoulder to shoulder, clad in salvaged or stolen motley and nursing drinks and grudges with the silent sag of beaten men.

  “Ah,” Whipsnade exclaimed in a horrible parody of joviality, as he espied the man he was looking for. “Such a fair evening to encounter such a dear friend. Especially as I’ve pressing need of his services.”

  The cracksman sunk his filthy-capped head even lower within his ragged collar and tried to turn away.

  “Mister Oswald Smedley,” Whipsnade purred in his ear, “Uncle needs a little something done. Right now.”

  Smedley didn’t turn his head. “And if’n I’m busy?”

  “Uncle will be most disappointed. You might say he’ll be saddened to death. Someone’s death.”

  “I’m terrible hungry,” Smedley whispered, “but find myself a coin or two short. If’n I can eat, say, a hot pie, I’ll be busy no longer, and right ready to please Uncle, if’n you take my meaning.”

  “I do indeed,” Whipsnade replied, as tenderly as a doting mother, “and so does Long Tom here—don’t he?”

  He spun around to give the publican a bared-teeth smile so suddenly that the man behind the bar, for all his scarred and battered bulk, recoiled back against the wall, setting bottles and decanters to clinking. “Y-yes, sir!” he stammered. “Hot pie right away, sir!”

  And vanished back into the kitchen, to reappear almost instantly with a steaming hot pie in his hand.

  “I’m thinking a tankard of your best will do Mister Smedley nicely to wash it down,” Whipsnade told the ceiling gently, and a full tankard appeared with commendable alacrity.

  Whipsnade smiled almost fondly at Long Tom. “Times are changing right fast, these days, and all too much is changing for the worse with them, but it warms the heart to see the Raging Lion is s
till everything Uncle praises it to be.”

  The publican stared back at him, half-smiling but with fear clear on his face and rising off him like a slaughterhouse stink.

  Whipsnade gave him a nod, turned his back, and said past Smedley’s ear, “Uncle came across sixty sovereigns the other day, and told me he thought Mister Smedley might be in need of them about now. Am I right?”

  Smedley turned a wince into a reluctant nod. “What do I have to do?”

  “You’ve heard of Lady Hailsham, yes? Has a fine home, she does.”

  Smedley shuddered. “Yes,” he whispered.

  “And, just now, she’s not in it. She’s halfway across fashionable London, attending a ball. Glittering things, balls. Where people drink too much and stay too late. Giving someone plenty of time to pluck up everything she’s written on paper—even hidden papers—and bring it neatly outside. That’s all.”

  “I don’t know where this particular fine home is,” Smedley said sullenly, downing the last of his tankard. Of the pie, mouth-burning hot though it had been, there was nothing left, not even crumbs.

  “Of course not,” Whipsnade purred, “so I’ll take you there. You and your sovereigns.” And he handed over a heavy, clinking cloth bag.

  Mister Oswald Smedley picked it up, face pale and gray with fear and disbelief, and turned to Whipsnade.

  Who led the way, wearing the softest of smiles, through the suddenly silent taproom of the Raging Lion, men parting before them like hurrying curtains, and out into the night.

  OCTEMBER 5

  Obligingly, the moon chose that moment to come scudding out from behind a dark drift of cloud.

  Straker lifted his hat to it in thanks and salute, for he’d just reached a stretch of path—it was really no more than a well-trodden game trail through the woods—where roots were frequent, uneven, and jutted proud. He’d rather not turn an ankle, if it was all the same to the God of the Cross and the newer gods of steam.

  And then he stepped around a tree and saw in divers shafts of moonlight the descending arc of path ahead. There was an unmistakable silhouette on it, a dark figure lurching purposefully along with a distinctive and all-too-familiar side-to-side gait.

  Bentley Steelforce. His Iron Assassin.

  Straker quickened his pace, but his lurching creation was well ahead of him and moving fast.

  Over the roots and the uneven ground, even with the helpful moonlight, it was as much as Lord Tempest could manage to keep Steelforce in view.

  Out of the woods and down through meadows and past a copse or three and out onto lawns, Lord Barnstaple’s mansion standing proud in the moonlight ahead.

  The Silent Man lurched around the great house in a wide arc, to and through the rear gate of Lord Barnstaple’s stableyard. Tempest put his head down and ran as he’d never run before.

  He was stumbling and gasping by the time he reached the gloom of the stables, where one stablehand fled at the sight of Steelforce, lurching purposefully along with arms raised to grapple anyone in his way—but the next stablehand snarled, “Get out, you! Clear off!” and raised a muck shovel threateningly.

  The Iron Assassin didn’t hesitate, and the shovel clanged off the exoskeleton hard enough to strike sparks—twice, thrice, and then in a frantic tattoo of ringing metal that rose to a fierce crescendo.

  And ended abruptly as Steelforce plucked shovel and straining, kicking man off the ground and flung them against a nearby post. A meaty smack heralded a limp, bloody slide down that post—and by then Jack Straker had reached his creation.

  He pounced from behind, clawing open the little door in the back of the Iron Assassin’s skull, half-hidden under the surviving wisps of hair, and pulling out the control key—even as his creation launched a vicious elbow thrust, that would have done real damage to someone not expecting it.

  The key was actually a small box adorned with a glued-on glass eyeball, to differentiate it from earlier, cruder versions. Yes, his Iron Assassin had an eye in the back of his head.

  Even before the little box had been stuffed into Tempest’s pocket, Steelforce had slumped. Straker backed away hastily, but Steelforce had stopped trying to attack him and now started to wander aimlessly along the row of stalls.

  Gently, Tempest plucked at his sleeve, snared it, smiled into the slack and unresponsive face, and started to lead his creation back out of the stables.

  Steelforce stumbled after him, more dazed than obedient, but they weren’t six steps outside the stables when tumult arose from the direction of the Barnstaple mansion: a rabble of servants with bobbing lanterns and wildly waving fowling pieces.

  The cracks and flashes of the first hasty shots arose, peppering them both, and it was the sheer mischance of Straker’s leading Steelforce that the Iron Assassin was the closest target and got hit several times.

  A ball spanged off the exoskeleton and burned past Tempest’s cheek—and Steelforce went wild, tearing free of his creator’s grasp to lay about in all directions with both fists, brawling with the empty air.

  A second ragged volley sent the Iron Assassin rushing off into the woods.

  As Tempest spun around to follow, he caught a glimpse of two faces staring down at him from an upper gable in the stable roof. One was the Prince Royal, and the other belonged to an unfamiliar and visibly frightened female.

  And then, amid more shots, the shouts of the pursuing Barnstaple servants, and the disappearance of the moon and its light behind some useful clouds, he was pelting into the trees after the Iron Assassin.

  Who could lurch along through the endless trees and the deep gloom far faster than he could sprint. Straker soon lost track of him.

  * * *

  “Forgive my boldness, Lord, but did Smedley bring out anything useful?” Whipsnade asked, from the door.

  Uncle looked up from his desk. The cracksman had brought quite a bundle of papers from Lady Hailsham’s home, and, as he’d suspected, much of it was dross—polite but empty daily correspondence of the “So sorry I missed you” sort—but he’d already set more than a few items aside as promising blackmail material, or fodder that might be spun up into something that could frighten her.

  And then he’d spotted the cipher. Sometimes, being the trusted lord he was came in useful …

  Just two small pages of a code he knew. Notes to herself, rather than a missive or a report meant for other eyes; their very informality made them effective indeed. She suspected him and some others of being Order members and had noted the evidence pointing in that direction.

  Damning evidence.

  Uncle had just sat back with a sigh as Whipsnade had come to the door. Rather than replying, he held up an imperious forefinger to indicate that Whipsnade was to wait in silence, drew an unused page of notepaper to right in front of him on his blotter, took up his quill, and started writing.

  Just a few lines, in his very best, most ornate hand. An invitation to Lady Hailsham to dine at Pitt’s, an expensive London club, this evening. “It is most important I see you,” was one of the lines.

  As he read it over, he felt—he was a trifle surprised to realize—genuine regret for what was to come. Folding it and sealing it with the best wax, for she deserved no less, he held it out to Whipsnade.

  “Deliver this to Halworthy Burton at first light, to pass along to Lady Hailsham,” he instructed. “Oh, and don’t return Smedley to the streets until you’re on your way to pick up Lady Hailsham. We don’t want him to bolt too far and too fast, if you take my meaning.”

  “Dyson’s not as swift of foot as he once was,” Whipsnade agreed.

  “We none of us are, Whipsnade,” Uncle warned quietly. “It’s the curse that steals up to rob us all.”

  * * *

  Some folk in Bishop’s Bottom, as everywhere else in the English countryside, loved to watch the arrivals and departures of mail airships by night. The silent drift of twinkling lanterns, the swinging lines and grapples, the faint luminescence of light reflected off the bulbous fla
nks of the great aerial vessels … one was coming in to moor at the Royal Mail yard right now.

  Small sleepy boys in bedchamber windows and toiling servants alike stopped what they were doing to watch it.

  None of them saw a smaller and much-lower-flying black dirigible scudding through the sky nearby.

  It was of the oldest, crudest sort, steered by rudders and vanes operated by someone peddling a velocipede built into the front of its underslung cargo gondola, and it was showing no lights at all. As it silently drifted out of the night to pass over Lord Barnstaple’s country house.

  Some servants saw it then, as clouds parted again and the landscape was bathed once more in bright moonlight. Men were descending from it on rope ladders and lines that had grappled chimneys and shutters and downspouts, men whose faces were hidden behind goggles and leather face masks that covered their heads from chin to eyes, men who wore dark suits overlaid with greatcoats and strapped-on hats and leather gloves with metal-tipped fingers.

  They invaded the mansion, kicking in windows and hauling out weapons. They used these to strike viciously at anyone they saw and ransacked room after room in wantonly destructive haste, obviously searching for something. Just as obviously, these murderous agents would stop at nothing to get it.

  Then they emerged, climbing the lines and unhooking them, departing as swiftly as they’d come.

  Lord Barnstaple’s heart had failed him in the midst of a bellowing, barefisted defense of his home, and he’d dropped like a stone. So he’d lain, bloodied, senseless, and presumed dead, with servants fighting to protect his body. The invaders had contented themselves with smiting these loyal wights in passing—and so when they fled, they left behind a lord barely alive, fallen amid many sprawled and dead servants.