A Study in Ashes (49 page)

The name hung in the air, unnaturally resonant.

“We had begun to talk about contact poisons,” Watson continued as if he hadn’t spoken. He walked forward, forcing Tobias back into the room. Although the doctor was the shorter man, his confident bonhomie made one automatically obey. “I grew curious, so I took the liberty of making an examination once you were asleep.”

Instinctively, Tobias looked at his right hand. His fingers weren’t swollen anymore, but the tips had bruised.
Is that normal? What does that mean?
The poison had burrowed into his imagination, a lethal and unpredictable fairy that had him at the mercy of its caprice. But after serving the Gold King, that almost felt normal.

“Your gesture gives you away,” said Watson. “You knew precisely what you were asking when you raised the subject of poisoning by touch. It’s a variety I’ve encountered before, by the way. Where did you come in contact with it?”

“Papers,” Tobias answered curtly. “I touched papers coated with the substance, and I was told there is no cure.”

“Which was why I imagine you left London without a word,” Watson added. “Evelina knew nothing of your condition. Very noble, trying to spare your family the pain of watching your illness progress.”

Since that had been exactly what he’d been thinking, Tobias didn’t even flinch. “I thought I could put Evelina into her uncle’s care toward the end.”

“Very sensible,” said the doctor.

Tobias turned away, bracing his hands on the windowsill and looking out at the rolling moors. “How much time do I have?”

Watson hesitated. “How do you feel? Nausea? Numbness?”

“Not bad, actually. Better than before.”

“There is a—not an antidote, but another drug that slows the action of the poison. You appear to have responded well.”

That made Tobias turn around. “You treated me?”

“I’m a doctor,” Watson said. “Are you refusing my care?”

“I’m the Gold King’s maker. Evelina’s jailor. Why would you lift a finger to help me?”

“Dear God, you’re a young man in trouble, not the arch villain of a melodrama. From the first moment I ever met you, you’ve been reeling on the brink. Take the medicine. I don’t know precisely how long it will work, but you should have an extra month of reasonable health. That will at least give you the time to put your affairs in order.”

Another month
. Combined with the time he had left anyway, that might make six weeks. Or eight. It was too little and too much. Too little to fix anything and more than he had nerve for. All the walls he’d built around his panic ripped open, spilling terror like entrails.

“I killed the Scarlet King,” Tobias blurted out, not knowing that he was going to say it. “The reason Keating agreed to let me come here is to escape any possibility of scandal.” He was aware of Holmes materializing in the doorway, but he didn’t care. “My wife and son are in London. They’re the ones Keating cares about.”

“And your job is to go quietly to the grave, is that it?” Holmes asked. “Was it the Scarlet King who killed you?”

It sounded like a question for a séance, and Tobias laughed. It sounded hysterical. “Yes.”

“You’re in good company. The crown prince died last night of the same affliction.”

“What?” Tobias wheeled to face the detective. “The prince is dead?”

“Discoveries are coming thick and fast.” Holmes exchanged a look with Watson. “Intriguing news on all sides, it seems.”

“Besides the prince?”

“There will be a riot for the evening papers. Not only is His Royal Highness deceased, Her Majesty’s Laboratories are burned, and the body of the Scarlet King was discovered bobbing face down more or less where the Gray King was found last year.”

“They found Reading!” Tobias exclaimed.

Watson looked grim. “It is fairly certain that any usable evidence will have been destroyed by the water.”

“Of course, Keating has quietly annexed all of Scarlet’s interests beginning with his air fleet,” Holmes went on.
“The Steam Council will no doubt object with predictable results. It seems, Mr. Roth, that you may well have pulled the trigger that fires off a civil war.”

“I know,” Tobias murmured under his breath.
Well, don’t say I never did anything with my life
. But it had been easy to be a fatalist before he had been a father. Now he would have given anything, everything for more time with his son, and he would pay twice that to know Jeremy and Alice stayed safe.

“The incident with Her Majesty’s Laboratories is of particular interest. All those connected with its destruction have vanished,” said Holmes. “Including my niece.” The way Holmes said it made it clear Evelina’s disappearance had been planned in advance.

“Really?” Tobias replied. “And that has nothing to do with why I was locked in this room?”

Holmes looked almost apologetic. “I suppose you will wish to mount a search, Mr. Roth?”

“No, let her go.”

“Will not the Gold King take that as a dereliction of duty?” Dr. Watson asked.

But Tobias was already staggering under the weight of what Holmes and the doctor had told him. He sat down on the edge of his bed.
Six weeks. Maybe eight
. “No doubt he will, but I don’t have much time and Evelina has suffered enough at his hands. The least I can do is let her go.”

“You will hear no objection from me,” said Holmes, “although I fear Mr. Keating will hardly let you return home. Not with the Scarlet King’s murder still under investigation.”

Holmes was, of course, completely correct. Tobias cursed softly. The crown prince was dead, war was upon them, and all the choices Tobias had made looked wrong. It was time to stop betting on the steam baron least likely to harm the ones he loved. Playing it safe had already cost him his life. Now it was time to fight.

Tobias shook his head slowly. “I’m not proposing to crawl home like a sick dog to curl up and die. I have a wife and child. I have sisters. They need protection.” And he had
friends. Bucky had urged him to join the resistance—and Bucky had a workshop crammed with a maker’s tools. “There is one thing I can do with the time I have left that will help them all.”

“What is that?” Watson asked.

“I know Keating’s war machines like no one else does. I know exactly what they can and can’t do, and I know how to make them dance to my tune. I put an end to one steam baron. I can finish the rest.”

Dartmoor, October 6, 1889
TAVERN AT THE EAST DART
1:30 p.m. Sunday

THE SCHOOLMASTER’S GATHERING
of generals took place not at Baskerville Hall, but in a small tavern some distance away.

“Where the bleeding hell is this place?” Striker muttered. “We’re in the middle of feckin’ nowhere.”

“We’re there.” Nick pointed to a faded inn sign announcing the East Dart. “I think the Dart refers to the river.”

The landscape was indescribably beautiful in the bright sunshine, the sound of the rushing water a counterpoint to a flock of tiny cheeping birds. Ahead, a half-timbered inn squatted beneath a canopy of turning leaves.

“Tell me there’s beer.” Striker eyed his surroundings suspiciously, as if the birds and flowers were about to turn on him.

“Hard to say. It’s Sunday.” And if laws serving beer on the Lord’s day might vary, local customs varied more.

His friend grunted in disgust. “I know London isn’t everything for a man of the world like yourself, but at least I could count on a decent bit o’ bacon and a good pint.”

“At least the place looks open,” Nick reassured him, and pushed through the dark wood door. “Just ask for something local.”

Striker strolled up to the bar, rolling his shoulders under the weight of his heavy coat. They’d fallen back into the
rhythm of their friendship within seconds, but Nick knew Striker wasn’t letting him go far without a watchdog. There was no question of Nick vanishing twice.

However, he would have to content himself with a station outside the council room door. Nick had been told to go to the back room, so he carried on through the taproom, nodding to the barkeep to his right and taking a quick inventory of the faces sitting near the fire. They looked like locals out for friendly conversation, but he catalogued them anyhow just in case.

Some of the faces he expected to see were in the back room. There he saw the Schoolmaster as well as Edgerton, Penner, and Smythe, in addition to a handful of others he didn’t know. He’d half expected Sherlock or Mycroft Holmes, but both were absent.

The Schoolmaster rose to greet him, his face splitting into a grin. “Captain Niccolo. So your journey to Cornwall was a success. That is good news.”

“I found my ship and most of my crew. Even the ash rooks.” Nick couldn’t help smiling back. Athena had been entranced with her new vessel, and the crew had been entranced with the way she could make it fly.

“Please, have a seat. Those of you who do not know the captain have heard of him, I am sure. We owe him a great deal for the intelligence he’s provided on the enemy’s weaponry.”

Nick felt the eyes of the others on him, but he’d been a showman too long for that to bother him. He sat down with as much casual sangfroid as he could summon. “You are welcome to what I could find.”

“Captain, allow me to introduce these gentlemen. Edgerton, Smythe, and Penner you’ve met. This is Lord Elford, General Fortman, and Sir Simon Yates. They are by no means all of my advisors, but they are the most directly involved with the deployment of ground forces. We’ve just been reviewing the strength we have to draw on, and where the enemy is situated. It seems the majority of the Scarlet King’s forces are in the north or else due east of here.”

“My regiment is one that Scarlet bought wholesale for his
private use,” Smythe put in. He was wearing the blue uniform of his cavalry unit, and looked far more at ease in it than the civilian clothes he’d worn before. “Scarlet left our command structure alone when he took over, but now the top officers are all being replaced by the Gold King’s men. Something’s happened at the highest level. No one knows what, but our lads have had enough. We swore an oath to the queen, not some boilermaker—and certainly not a string of ’em. We’re not a box of spoons to be passed from hand to hand. Most of the regiments the barons took over feel the same. It’s not right and they’re ready to take a stand.”

“As noble as that is,” said General Fortman—probably a retired general, back in the traces for queen and country—“that only represents a small percentage of the steam barons’ total forces.”

Smythe wasn’t daunted. “We may be small, but we’re close in. We’re yours when you need a precise blow straight to the heart.”

Nick knew Evelina didn’t like Smythe, but he couldn’t fault the man’s courage. What he was proposing could easily become a suicide mission. From the expression on the other men’s faces, they knew that, too.

Edgerton spoke up next. He talked about weapons, production, and distribution of the scattered makers and the forces they had gathered. Penner put in the occasional remark that indicated he was heavily involved in research. They were young, but the others listened with attention.

“That’s all very well and good,” said Fortman. “This will be more a battle of engines than of troops. However, we need
some
troops besides what Smythe has proposed—men who are more than mobs.”

The Schoolmaster answered. “They have been gathering in London over the last months. Mycroft Holmes put the word out through his cronies. He found an entire network of retired commanders connected through their clubs and country house parties who were more than pleased to call their old units together.”

“We know that,” replied Lord Elford. “But those men are
in London
, not with the machines coming in from the countryside. The rural forces need support.”

“What they need,” Edgerton countered, “is power. We can invent what we like, but unless we have fuel to run it, we have nothing. We’ve tried power storage devices, but distribution is a problem.”

Nick sat up straight. “Your air fleet can help with both those problems. Defense and distribution.”

They all gave him a curious look. “Your steamspinner is no doubt an amazing ship, but she isn’t quite a fleet,” said the Schoolmaster.

Nick drew out the papers Captain Roberts had given him and pushed them across the table. “These men are willing to help. For a price of a pardon, certainly, but you won’t find more experienced fighters.”

The Schoolmaster picked up the papers and flipped through them. He pushed the green-tinted glasses up on his head. “Damn it all, these are the pirates!”

“They are,” said Nick. “You put the word out and they heard you. They don’t like the Steam Council any more than the rest of us. The sky patrols are bad for smuggling.”

The Schoolmaster’s expression was caught between laughter and tears. “Of course.”

“Can they be trusted?” asked Sir Simon Yates, every inch the aging dandy with his monocle and carefully tied cravat.

It was a reasonable question, and Nick didn’t mind answering it. “Some more than others. I can tell you who would be suited best to what task, but you can trust them all to fight. There are no cowards there.”

“That is excellent,” Edgerton replied. “Two of our problems solved, at least in part.”

“But can we make enough storage cells?” the Schoolmaster asked.

Both Penner and Edgerton shook their heads. “We’re moving mountains to fill the need,” Edgerton said. “But we could use that supply of coal.”

Nick frowned. If they ever needed Evelina and her ability to mix magic and mechanics, it was now. She had created Mouse and Bird by coaxing devas to take up residence in
the clockwork toys, and more or less brought them to life without the need for any kind of fuel. Centuries ago, Athena had been created in a similar way. Nick didn’t have the skill himself, but he knew enough to see the possibilities. “Have you thought of working with magic users?”

An uneasy rustle went around the table. The Schoolmaster looked at him curiously. “The use of magic in warfare is not something this council has been able to agree on, but there are some besides yourself with talent in the Baskerville fold. Did you not hear about the destruction of Her Majesty’s Laboratories last night?”