A Study in Ashes (5 page)

“Ready harpoons!” the captain bawled, and the gunners scrambled. The flaming projectiles they called hot harpoons could turn a ship into a bonfire in minutes. It meant a ruthless, horrible death for the crew
.

And those harpoon guns were only a dozen yards away, the sweating gunners muttering prayers to whatever dark gods they worshipped. A misfire with a harpoon would kill anyone who came too close
.

“Let’s go,” Tobias said, jumping up and pulling his sister toward the cabins. He’d meant to ensure Imogen was safely away from battle as soon as he’d set foot on deck, but there hadn’t even been time for that before the cannonades had begun
.

She stumbled against him as he ran, gripping her hand too tightly in his fear. He banged through the hatch to the cabin deck, grateful when the door closed and muffled the noise. It wasn’t the best place to be if the rigging burned through, but it was safer than being on deck while the harpoons were in play
.

The main corridor on the
Helios
was narrow and claustrophobic. A long, yodeling scream came from the far end where the taciturn surgeon ruled his white-walled domain. Imogen flinched at the noise, making a tiny cry of her own, and Tobias pulled her in the other direction, away from the sound. The amount of blood on the floor said the surgeon already had more than one customer
.

Tobias pushed open doors until he found a tiny room at the fore with a table and two chairs. Imogen fell onto the closest seat, clearly exhausted. It was the first moment he’d seen his sister in good light since her rescue. Her hair was falling from its pins in a straggle of wheat-blond wisps. Tears tracked her cheeks, leaving pale stripes through smudges of soot
.

Tobias’s emotions, bludgeoned into numbness, stirred back to life. If he had possessed the least talent with those harpoons, he would have cheerfully smashed Magnus from the sky
.

“I know that look,” Imogen said. “What look?”

“Your older brother look.” A smile stirred her features, the merest flicker of her usual self. “But right now, I need you to listen, not to thump the schoolyard bully. You’ve already done the brave thing by coming to fetch me.”

“Your pirate captain saved you,” Tobias said, surprised by his own bitterness. Had he needed to play hero that badly? Lord knew he needed redemption, but still …

“Nick isn’t mine,” Imogen said. “He’s in love with my dearest friend. And he might have got to me first, but you brought me back here. Yet none of that matters now. There are more dire matters than our pride.”

Her voice rang whip-sharp in the silence between explosions. Imogen was normally soft-voiced and graceful, the perfect image of femininity. This mood was something new. Frowning, Tobias sat across the small table, close enough that he reached out to touch her cheek. She took his hand, squeezing until her nails bit his skin. Something boomed overhead, and dust fell from the ceiling with a sound like rain on dry leaves
.

“Listen,” she said, her voice quick and low. “Magnus has automatons like I’ve never seen before. They’re far more refined. I suppose one might almost say beautiful. One of them was named Serafina.”

Tobias swallowed, his mouth tasting of blood and smoke. “I know. I saw her once.” The memory of the thing, seemingly alive, still made his flesh creep
.

Imogen’s expression crumpled, her face growing pink with emotion. “I shot her to pieces! I killed her.”

Tobias blinked, putting his other hand over hers. “However realistic she might have looked, she was just a machine.”

Imogen’s eyes went wide, the gray irises translucent through her tears. “She was alive. And quite mad, but that was the least of it. Magnus had altered her in terrible ways. He had Father’s old automatons, too. And what Father said about Anna, Tobias …”

It was clear that she would have said more, but a jolt shuddered through the ship, bumping Tobias like a cart hitting a rut. The rigging. It well might have been giving way. He jumped up, throwing open the locker near the wall. This was where parachutes should be stored and, sure enough, there were half a dozen stacked neatly inside. He picked one up, hating to interrupt Imogen but more worried about getting her safely home
.

Another roar rocked them where they sat. Tobias grabbed for the wall, losing his grip on the parachute. Imogen started to fall, and he caught her, her thin body so light he might have crushed her with the gentlest squeeze. He could feel the tension knotting her frame, leaving her quivering like a harp string. As the ship tilted to evade the attack, a glass decanter slid across the table with a rasp. Tobias noted with acute regret that it was empty
.

“What’s happening?” Imogen demanded in a tiny voice
.

Tobias let go of her and rose to peer out the window. The cabin wasn’t quite tall enough to stand up straight, so he felt like a creature peering out of its burrow. He had a good view of the starscape, the blackness shrouded by veils of smoke. He squinted in one direction, then shifted to see the other way. Fire. But this time, it wasn’t coming from their ship. The hot harpoons had done their work
.

Nausea crawled up his throat, but he wiped it from his voice. “The
Wyvern’
s ablaze. So is the
Red Jack.
We must be winning.”

Guilt clawed him. All those crewmen were burning. He tried to put the image aside, but failed, breaking into a sickly sweat. Truly, he should have been glad the
Helios
had the upper hand, but all he felt was a different shade of panic. Before he could close his eyes, he saw crewmen leaping from the
Jack,
so desperate to avoid the flames that they would brave empty air. He hoped to God they had parachutes, too
.

“Nick’s ship has been hit?” Imogen said with alarm. She was up in a moment, pushing him out of the way to see out the window. Her hand beat against the window, a single, hopeless gesture followed by a strangled noise from deep in her throat. “But he saved me! Does that mean nothing?”

“It’s a pirate ship.”

“He still saved me!”

Tobias’s hands made fists. Sorrow rose, lashed by anger at the despair in her voice. She was right, there would be no justice. They had their orders. They were to capture the
Red Jack
—preferably intact, but lightly toasted would have to do. “Nick has a special navigation tool. Keating wants it for himself, and what Keating wants, he gets. The
Helios
is his ship to order.”

Imogen put both hands to her mouth. “Does Nick stand a chance?”

Tobias looked inside himself and found a wasteland. “No. He’s a pirate, and he stole the device from Keating in the first place. If he’s caught, he’ll be hanged. If he dies tonight, at least he’s free.” Even as he said it, he hated himself
.

“He’d like that better, I think.”

“Is that why Keating sent you? For the spoils of war?”

When did you get so worldly-wise?
Tobias wondered sadly
. When Father denied you a love match so that he could use your beauty to lure rich suitors?
Suddenly he remembered that Imogen had been eloping when Magnus had grabbed her. She’d dared everything—a bright flame fighting the wind—and lost
.

She pressed her forehead against the glass of the window
.

He hardened his heart before he started to weep himself
.

“Put on one of those parachutes. We need to be ready to evacuate.”

But Imogen looked up slowly, the delicate lines of her face in silhouette against the blaze of the
Wyvern.
Her features were shadowed in muted sepia and gray, the combination of night and the afterglow of destruction. “Then we don’t have much time, and you need to hear this. Magnus had put Anna’s soul inside Serafina, and she used that body to try to kill me. She was jealous that I had lived. Tobias, she was still alive.”

The words skimmed past Tobias, refusing to catch hold. Or maybe he shoved them away because they were too awful. “What are you saying?”

Her lips parted to answer
.

The next instant, the
Wyvern
exploded, a flash of orange flaring outward from the midpoint of the gondola. A tiny part of Tobias’s mind—the part that thrived on mechanics and technical theory—decided it was a malfunction of the aether distiller, brought on by excessive heat. A moment later, the enormous black balloon went up in a billow of white-hot fire, scorching what was left of the sleek gondola to ash
.

Imogen’s eyes flared wide, meeting his with an expression of astonishment so profound that Tobias looked over his shoulder to see what was the matter. There was nothing, the tiny room exactly as it had been a minute before. Yet as he turned back, she was falling, folding up like a scarf tossed carelessly to the floor. He barely caught her in time to ease her down
.

“Imogen?” he cried. “Im, what’s the matter?”

She was shuddering, fighting against a force ravaging her body
.

Tobias fell to his knees and bent over his sister, pulling off his jacket to cushion her head. “Surgeon!” he bellowed. “Surgeon, come quickly!”

She whimpered, her back bowing as if in some terrible agony. Her fingers clutched at him, her eyes holding his as if his gaze alone was keeping her tethered to her body
.

“Stay with me!” he urged. “Imogen, hang on. You know you can. You’re strong.”

But her eyes slowly closed, the light in them dimming as if someone had turned down the wick inside her. Fear struck deep and true, shredding him to the quick. There was little he counted on anymore, but he counted on Im. She was all that remained of an innocence he’d lost
.

“Surgeon!” he bawled, but the man never came
.

The ship jolted again, and he knew the rigging was about to give way. He could feel the ship descending and he could only pray they’d reach the ground before they fell. And yet that wasn’t the thing he feared most right then
.

His hands turned chill and clammy, clumsy as paws as he held his sister, trembling as the battle—barely worth noticing now—raged on outside. “Im?”

Her lips moved, her voice so faint he was sure he’d misheard it. “Im?”

She spoke again, and this time he bent close, putting his ear close to her mouth. “Surely I killed you?”

And then she did not speak again
.

London, September 18, 1889
SPIE HEADQUARTERS
9:05 p.m. Wednesday

Visitors to London never fail to be charmed by the many-colored globes of the gaslights illuminating the public streets. Swaths of gold, green, and blue glow along the horizon, an exotic panorama of the modern age. But these delights to the eye serve a practical purpose, each hue indicating which utility supplies their gas. The owners of these companies are therefore known by the colors of their gaslights—the Gold King, the Green Queen, the Blue King, and so forth. It is an altogether quaint custom that goes far to enhance the air of charm and eccentricity already inherent in Londontown.

—The Serendipitous Armchair:

A Gentleman’s Travelling Companion to London
,

2nd edition

Mother Empire is held hostage, bound and weeping, to Industrial Vampires known as the steam barons. GOLD, GREEN, BLUE, or SCARLET, they monopolize railways and manufactories, coal mines and docks. Merchants must pay to sell their wares while the POOR PERISH in the DARK and COLD. Let it be understood that the only recourse to this TYRANNY is WAR.

—Political pamphlet, Baskerville Rebellion, 1889

THE MEMORIES OF THAT NIGHT WERE STILL WITH TOBIAS AS
he walked through a dark alley, a peculiar strain of horror plucking at his soul. Anna had been Imogen’s twin, and she’d died young. Lord Bancroft, their father, had confessed that he’d attempted to save Anna by allowing Magnus to transfer her soul into an automaton. That she’d survived and tried to kill Imogen … but that was where his mind ducked sideways, refusing to engage. Had that truly been what he’d heard Imogen say? If it was, then what was he supposed to do about it? Magnus and all his creations had burned up that night. But then what had Imogen’s final words meant?
Surely I killed you
. Had she meant Anna?

A prickling of alarm surged through him, as it always did when he reached this point in his thoughts. Had Anna somehow touched Imogen at the very end? Was that the reason Imogen was ill? This was why Tobias hated magic with a virulent revulsion. It didn’t make sense, but then it did. The logic appealed to a dark, hidden part of himself that was more frightening than any fireside tale. And in those terrible moments, he felt strangely like the Grail King—wounded at the heart and never able to heal, even if that healing would cure the whole world.