The Iron Assassin Read online

  He flung his weight against the lever and had the trap up. It took but a moment to catch hold of the chain and swing, until it dropped into the sewer below with a splash. He slid down it, immersing himself entirely, then clambered back up and sprinted right at the flames.

  His spare keys were in a false bottom of the right-hand drawer of a salvaged old desk pedestal clear across the room. All he had to do was haul the whole drawer free and carry it back out.

  Cogs and boilers, but it was hot! He slipped on something, tripped on something else, was vaguely aware of a blazing post toppling on his left as part of the loft overhead sagged in the raging flames, and …

  Had it! The drawer was heavy with spanners and awls and the pieces of a disassembled old knurl cutter, but …

  Back out onto the floor, Straker, panting in pain, flung the smoldering drawer toward the office and rolled after it, trying to put out the worst of the flames licking up from his clothing. He should get out of here.

  His roll brought him to a stop just shy of the drawer. He overturned it with a blow of his fist, heedless of the tools, clawed the bottom off, and—

  Nothing. His older, cruder keys to command the Iron Assassin were gone.

  Stolen.

  The Tentacles—or Marlshrike—or someone else now had enough keys to give five such assassins simple orders. Once they managed to duplicate the mechanisms, they’d be able to create an army of lurching slayers, and—

  The world behind him erupted in a rolling maelstrom of shrieking, tumbling timbers and flames, flames everywhere, racing out into the night.

  Lord Tempest went tumbling helplessly with them, sounds and lights his dwindling shroud, down into darkness.

  OCTEMBER 7

  The signal flashes sent from here to the Yard had been clear enough: “urgent” and “94,” which was him. Over and over again.

  So Chief Inspector Theo Standish lost no time, once the beagle flitter caught and latched onto the Tower Street beagle station moorings, in flinging wide the door and hastening down the iron steps from the mooring mast.

  They’d only just beaten the storm. Behind him, rain was falling like a swiftly advancing curtain along the Thames, lightning stabbing down here and there to strike various airship masts across London. Gusts were hurling airships across the sky. This would mean aerial-traffic shutdown, probably until morning; right now, extra mooring cables to tether against high winds were being hastily fastened all over London.

  Lighting cracked blindingly nearby, and Standish fell down the last few steps with more haste than dignity, banging through the door in none too good a humor.

  Into a room crowded with a generous handful of the glowering refuse of London’s streets, muttering foul words or mumbling incoherently in the narrow “standing cells” that lined the room. It smelled strongly of them, and of spew and urine and even emptied bowels. His bowler started to slip as he stalked along, and his temper wasn’t helped by the titter that arose behind him as he caught at it, straightened it, and fetched up at a littered desk where a sad-eyed sergeant was checking over arrest reports and getting several surly constables to supply what they’d missed writing down the first time around.

  “Well?” Standish growled.

  “Well, what? Wait yer turn, wait yer tur—oh. Sorry, sir!”

  Standish waved the apology away. “Urgent. Ninety-four. I’m here.”

  The sergeant half-rose to point down the rest of the room, at a distant door. “In there. Blakeslee will tell you all, sir.”

  “Thank you,” Standish said, adjusting his bowler again and stalking on.

  Shortly he found himself in a back room lit only by two dim lamps above a countertop where several men were standing conferring, their backs to him. There was no light at all over a bare table in the center of the room that someone had been laid out on. Someone wearing good boots, who’d been in a fire.

  Tempest.

  “Chief Inspector Standish?” This must be Blakeslee. Clipboard in hand, mustache that looked as if the rats had got at it, standing with a young constable with ears that stuck out like tankard handles.

  Standish nodded, already bent over the body. Jack Straker was alive and bandaged here and there. Bruised and burned all over, and twitching as if dreaming of moments of violent action. A mess.

  “Where was he found?” he asked.

  “In a burning warehouse near the docks, in Limehouse. A fire that was set. Kegs of black powder and lamp oil and probably a few more modern propellants, joined by fuses snaking everywhere. We found what was left of Dyson the Knife there, too; little more than a skeleton, but someone had broken his neck for him. After breaking his elbows and wrists. The sergeant first on the scene dragged Lord Tempest out and fell over more than a dozen trip wires doing so. Said he’d never seen so many outside the pages of a wild-headed magazine serial.”

  “Any tentacles drawn anywhere? Anything that looked like a squid or octopus?”

  Blakeslee gaped. “Why, yes. There was a squid chalked on one of the warehouse doors.”

  Standish nodded impatiently and straightened up, letting his fury show.

  Blakeslee misinterpreted, and said hastily, “He’s been doctored by the best we could find—Cramner and Guildenstern—and he’s been muttering and murmuring, off and on, but hasn’t woken up yet. I—”

  “Have someone stationed here to write down everything coherent he says, yes,” Standish said heavily. “I appreciate what you’ve—”

  The door he’d come in by opened again and a grim-faced sergeant came into the room. It was a man Standish knew, a veteran and a good one. Blunt, that was his name.

  Sergeant Blunt came up close and muttered, “The floating dead have been brought in, sir. There’s something you should see. Ah, that is to say, someone, rather.”

  Standish sighed. What now? He’d nigh forgotten that since the Blackwall beagle station had burned down a few months back, Tower Street had been where bodies that wash up or were found floating in the Thames east of Tower Street were brought. So, a suicide? More likely, a murder sent into the river in hopes of the body never being found.

  He followed Blunt wearily into another room, even gloomier than Blakeslee’s lair, where half a dozen sodden corpses lay dripping on stained and battered tables. A light had been positioned over just one of them.

  The only female. Whose clothing had been disarranged here and there to show a trifle more of her than would be polite, even at an intimate party. He knew the face at a glance, and froze.

  Blunt was watching him.

  “Lady Iolanthe Hailsham,” he said, as gently as any comforting vicar.

  “Where was she found?” Standish asked.

  “Off Sheerness. Floating.”

  “Murdered,” they agreed grimly.

  Standish let out a long sigh, looked at the ceiling for a moment, then said grimly, “Have her moved into the room with Tempest. I want him to have a proper look at her when he wakes up. He has the knack of seeing things we miss—or miss the meaning of, I should say. And have someone heat up a pie for me.”

  “Hungry, sir?”

  “I will be. I’m not leaving that room until Tempest and I are done with the lady.”

  “And then?”

  “And then,” Chief Inspector Standish informed Blunt quietly, “someone shall pay. In full.”

  He turned away and made for the door, but not before Blunt saw that the Chief Inspector’s hands had become fists, and that they were shaking.

  * * *

  Foxden was … large. Low of ceiling and intimate for the most part, all warm wood furniture and stucco and exposed beams like a country cottage, but it went on and on, room giving into room and unexpected passages opening out around corners. Bright morning sun was flooding through many windows.

  Rose explored cautiously, strolling with an idle air and trying not to appear to peer at anything closely, under the eyes of the silent guards who stood like footmen beside many of the doors. They were still and silent, thei
r scrutiny an ever-present watchful weight in the near-total silence. It seemed as if she was the only thing moving in Foxden.

  She found an arched door very much like those of the sacristy and vestry in the Bishop’s Bottom church, except that the uprights of its wooden frame were narrow bookshelves holding an untidy array of mismatched books. Reading shelves, rather than formal storage. Intrigued, she opened that door and beheld a small library, with a central reading table equipped with several sloped tabletop lecterns. A thin, earnest-looking young man with large, round-framed glasses was seated at one, bent over a book of heraldry.

  He looked up, in momentary irritation that became embarrassed but eager greeting.

  “Oh! Hello! I’m Gerald Prycewood. Ah, Herald Pursuivant to the Empire. And you are—?”

  “Lady Rose Harminster. I’m a doctor. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “Oh, not at all, not at all. The library is for everyone, I’ve been told, but, ah, few seem inclined to use it.”

  He lowered his head, as if he’d said more than he was wont to, and looked back at his book. Rose smiled, bade him farewell, and went out. So that was the quiet and respectful understudy to severe old Throckmorton. Well, at least this wasn’t a house entirely filled with guards and doxies.

  A few rooms later, she found herself in a hall that seemed a trifle familiar. After a few moments, she decided the double doors yonder must be the front doors she’d come through on her arrival. The guards had been here then, but had this strange concealed object against the wall across from those doors?

  It stood taller and bulkier than most furniture—an armoire, perhaps?—a large and ovoid shape covered by several overlapped sheets.

  Rose eyed the still and silent guards, then strode boldly to the thing, plucked up the edge of the sheeting, and started to peek under it.

  “Here! Come away from that!” the nearest guard said sharply.

  Rose dropped the sheet and backed away. “But—but what is it?”

  “Something secret,” he replied tersely, striding swiftly to place himself between her and the large covered object.

  Rose sighed. “Very well, then, but as a doctor, I demand to know if it’s anything that can do harm—so I know what injuries I may in future have to deal with.”

  “It’s a weapon,” he told her stolidly, “and that’s about all you need to know.”

  Someone glided smoothly to a stop at Rose’s elbow. It was Malmerston, the butler.

  “If you’ll step this way, ma’am…”

  Seething inwardly—had he been shadowing her, all the time she’d been exploring?—Rose did so. Malmerston led her through a door, closed it carefully behind her, then stepped across the room to unnecessarily rearrange some flowers.

  As he did so, he murmured sidelong. “The soldiers have their orders, but I am allowed a little more leeway. It’s some sort of gun, invented by the Lord Tempest, that forcibly projects—fires?—lengths of chain. The idea being to bludgeon and entangle someone. It’s in some sort of round housing and aimed at our front doors. None of us knows precisely how it works, so it’s best left alone.”

  “I … thank you,” Rose said in astonishment.

  “Glad to be of service, ma’am.” The butler bowed his head, held the door open for her, and once she’d stepped out of the room, glided on his way.

  So Foxden’s defenses ran to more than stiff-lipped men with guns. Well, that was a good thing, of course. And Malmerston liked, or at least respected her. Even better.

  She continued on her wanderings in a better humor, passing Tempest’s mysterious weapon and turning down a passage running toward the back of the house. Into another wing than that of her own room, perhaps?

  The guards were more frequent here, standing at one meeting of ways as thickly as trees—but they neither moved to obstruct her nor spoke to her, so she strolled past them, trying to pretend they were statues and not men watching her every move.

  Taking a passage that led to her left at random, Rose passed through an open archway and found herself suddenly in territory where there were no guards at all. Ahead, some doors stood open, light and the sounds of movement and quiet converse spilling out.

  The first open door showed her a pleasantly furnished sitting room with a spinet and a writing desk in its far corners.

  The second was a bedchamber dominated by a palatial bed—and in front of it, a partially clad couple stood side-on to her, locked in an intimate embrace.

  Rose hastily turned away, but not before they both broke off a kiss to look in her direction.

  The lushly beautiful woman she didn’t know, but the man was the Lord Lion—the Prince Royal!

  Rose fled back the way she’d come, but a voice—the woman—hailed her saucily, and when she hesitated, its source overtook her, strolled unconcernedly past her and turned to bar her way, clad only in a garter and a smile, and said, “One meets the nicest class of people here in Foxden! I’m Lil—a working woman, just to be candid—and you must be the lady doctor!”

  “I, uh, yes. Yes, I am. Rose Harminster. Uh, Lady Harminster.”

  Lil took her hand, smiling broadly, and said, “Now don’t be shy. The Prince wants you to join us.”

  “Join?”

  “You know—the three of us, abed.”

  Rose could feel heat flooding her face as she protested, “I’m a doctor, not…”

  “No?” Lil leered. “It’s by way of being a royal command, don’t you know!”

  Rose snatched her hand away and started to flee down the passage.

  And then stopped, drew in a deep breath, squared her shoulders, turned—and then, fists clenched, spun around and reached for Lil’s hand again.

  “Lead on,” she said firmly.

  * * *

  Simon Morrowpyke strode through Knightsbridge like a conquering hero, waving his walking stick airily and nodding and smiling in response to the various hails and lifted hats. The Crown Anarchists were more popular than they’d ever been, and rising daily in public acclaim; it would only be a matter of time before he was the Prime Minister of the Empire. And no wonder. Old Cantlemere was a stodgy fool whose sneerings and refusals to budge a fingerbreadth on divers issues had made him many enemies down the years. Morrowpyke counted himself proud to be among them.

  Yet he was determined not to be the sort of party leader who sniped but offered no alternatives. With a bit of cultivation before votes, he just might get major changes forced through Parliament before becoming Prime Minister—or use the battle over them to bring down the government and seize his chance to sweep the Old Bulls aside.

  Which was why he was strolling through fashionable Knightsbridge at this time of day. On his way to call on Lord Tempest, one of the younger and more handsome of the stylish young nobility, a man other younglings looked to. If he could convince Tempest to support the Abolition Act …

  He was proud of it. The newest bill of the Crown Anarchists, and largely his own work. Legislation sure to goad Cantlemere into one of his spitting fits. An act to set aside the royal family in favor of a ruling Parliament that would see to sanitation, road and bridge building, defense, banking, and hospitals—and leave all else to private citizens. As matters should be.

  Green fanlight, twin stone lions serving as railings to the front steps—ah! There it was! “Seven fourteen,” right enough. Tempest had the topmost floor …

  The door was open, and the place seemed deserted. He ascended steps that creaked only a little and found himself facing a single door flanked by a polished copper plate bearing the simple legend JACK STRAKER / LORD TEMPEST.

  The door stood a little ajar, and at his knock moved inward a trifle. Enough for him to see disarray. Furniture overturned, papers strewn on a carpeted floor.

  “Hello?” he called. “Anyone there?”

  Silence. He listened for a long time, and then frowned and used the end of his walking stick to propel the door inward, open wide.

  “Good God!”
/>   A scene of utter devastation met Morrowpyke’s gaze. The airy, pleasantly lit room before him had been ransacked. Empty bookcases leaned precariously forward, torn away from the walls after every single volume they’d held had been plucked from the shelves, rifled through, and flung at far walls. They were now leaning on the desks, wingback chairs, and side tables they’d fallen against. Broken decanters lay here and there, their splashed and spilled contents still wet.

  Was that—? No, just coats, still hooked on a stand that had been toppled. Not a body.

  The windows were closed, there was still no sound from the rooms beyond, the one open doorway he could see through showed more signs of damage, and—

  Heavy feet ascended the stairs behind him. Lots of them.

  Morrowpyke turned hastily. It would not do to be found—

  Beagles. Almost a dozen of them. Burly, hard-faced men in bowlers and dark suits. The hands of the foremost pair could break him in an instant. He fell back, stammering, “Hi! Have a care! I—I—I just arrived here, and found this! I’m—I’m Simon Morrowpyke, head of the Crown Anarchist Party, and I—”

  That first fearsome pair had rushed past him without a word, and so had the second. The third pair of beagles stopped in front of Morrowpyke and advanced on him, glaring. He gave way before them until he fetched up against an unseen wall and stumbled to a halt.

  “Ransacked, all of them, but no sign of Tempest,” one of the beagles called, from the depths of the rooms.

  The oldest beagle, who seemed to hold some sort of rank senior to his fellows, though Morrowpyke was admittedly no expert on such things, strode forward until his nose was almost touching the politician’s.

  Morrowpyke felt moved to hastily protest that he had, “Nothing to do with this, nothing at all!”

  The senior beagle gave him a look of contempt. “Of course not, sir. Whoever did this was bold, thorough, and cunning. You’re none of those three.”

  “Here, now!” Morrowpyke protested. “You don’t even know me!”

  “No, sir, but I’ve heard you speak in Parliament and read the bills you’ve drafted. That’s quite sufficient to reach the conclusions I hold.” The beagle leaned forward, crowding into Morrowpyke’s face, his cigar-scented breath warm on Morrowpyke’s chin.