A Study in Ashes (67 page)

He closed his eyes and imagined possible rewards for all his care: a ministerial appointment, accolades in the press, maybe a handshake from the future king. He had gambled heavily on the Baskerville affair, risked much and paid more, but dreaming of all he might win took the sting from his efforts.

He had just about sailed into peaceful oblivion, when he heard a light footfall. This time he sat up, the covers falling to his waist. He glanced first at the connecting door to his wife’s bedchamber, but it was closed. Then he wondered if it was his youngest daughter up to no good. “Poppy?”

A knife flashed, and the next moment he was pinned against his pillow. Bancroft heaved in a gasp, shrinking into the softness, his skin twitching to get away from the blade. Automatically, his hand shot toward the bedside table where he kept a gun, but the knife dug in.

“Greetings, my lord.”

A black outline blotted out the square of light from the window. Bancroft’s mind whirred, grasping for facts, but there was little to work with. The only thing that he could determine was that the figure was small.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Remembrance.” The word was precisely spoken, but with a curious accent. Chinese, he thought, though more pronounced than that of Han Lo. “I had a brother who came to these shores.”

Bancroft waited, deciding that the voice sounded female. “How can I help you?”

The knife jerked, making him gasp.

“I do not need your help!”

“Then tell me who you are.”

“Hush!”

The blade turned, the point spinning against this flesh. A terrified sound worked its way from his throat. His gaze flickered to his wife’s door, praying that she remained asleep.

“Do you know what happened to Mr. Harriman?” said the voice in a whisper like dry, dead leaves.

Harriman, Keating’s cousin, had been Bancroft’s partner in the forgery scheme—the one that had ended with so many Chinese bodies in the underground rivers. If Bancroft had entertained any doubts, now he was sure he was in trouble. “He died in prison.”

“How poorly that describes his fate,” the voice mocked.

“I don’t know the details. It didn’t matter to me.”

“It should.” The knife turned slowly, snagging in his flesh. “He died one cut at a time. It didn’t matter if his keepers locked him away. The knife came each night and took a little bit of him away.”

“Good God!”

“Not good if you were Harriman. Every dawn would find less. An ear, a finger, a toe. Eventually the easy pieces were gone and the rest had to be done in strips.”

Bancroft had had enough. He reached up to grab the knife hand, but a hard blow slapped him on the wrist, making his fingers turn to rubber.

“If one is frugal, there is enough flesh on a man to last a year before he dies. But Mr. Harriman did not live through the summer. He stopped sleeping, too afraid to shut his eyes for fear of what he would lose next. A man cannot go on forever like that.”

Bancroft’s flesh pebbled in disgust. “What did Harriman do to deserve such an end?”

The knife pricked hard enough to draw blood. “You do not remember?”

Bancroft’s heart was pounding now, but the fear was clearing his head. “Harriman was versatile. He did many things.”

The knife jabbed again.

“All right, all right.” Bancroft had been the brains, but Harriman was the actual perpetrator of the forgery scheme. “He hired goldsmiths from China. A dozen workers in all.”

“A dozen workers and my brother, the one you called Han Zuiweng,” the figure said, the words little more than an angry hiss.

Bancroft shuddered at the name.

“Harriman confessed that he paid my brother to kill the others, but he swore that it was you who killed my brother.”

Of all the moments for Harriman to start telling the truth
. “It was Harriman.”

“He swore it was you. Who should I believe?”

“Do you trust the word of the man who accused your brother of murder?” With glacial slowness, Bancroft edged his hand toward the night table.

The knife flashed viciously, biting into flesh. Bancroft began to cry out, but the knife was back at his throat, a hand across his mouth and nose, all but cutting off his air. The move had been almost superhuman in its quickness.

“Silence! Just because my grandfather was courteous to you, that does not mean I shall extend the same favor.”

So this was the little flower of a girl he had seen peeking through the doorway? His heart pounded double-time. He could smell a woman’s scent on the slim hand that gripped him like a vise. The unfamiliar mix of the feminine and the deadly coiled his guts with terror. “You sent the note at Duquesne’s?”

“Not I, but one of my kin. After we had sated our wrath with Harriman’s flesh, we had let you slip from our minds until you came knocking on our door, waving your coin. Our thirst for vengeance was suddenly reawakened. You see, our mother trained us—brothers and sisters—for a special kind of work. She also trained us to look after each other.”

The hand left Bancroft’s mouth, and he gasped. He felt
blood, hot and sticky, trickling over his hand. “What do you want?”

“Reparations must be made, my lord. I want reparation for my brother’s death. That is the custom of the Kingdom of Ashes, and you have rung the bell at our gates.”

“He was a killer!” Bancroft gritted his teeth, pain and fear heating his temper.

The woman’s voice was implacable. “He was my brother. If it makes you less confused, call him my brother knife, for we were made to be two blades shining on midnight silk.”

“Harriman was your blood money.”

She gave a huff of contempt. “He was not worth a jug of cheap wine. When the time is right, the underground will name its price.”

And suddenly the figure had withdrawn to stand by the lace curtain, so fast she had moved before his eyes could follow. “Do not think to escape. Harriman tried it, and discovered that he had nothing with which to run.”

And the figure slipped through the window, a drop of ink that left no stain. Bancroft fell back to the bed, and then plowed his fist into the pillow, speechless with rage.

One might ask what we know of this Prince Edmond. He is said to be an affable country lad with a ready smile and a fondness for witty conversation. And somewhere between pints of ale, he’s managed to assemble an army of makers without the Steam Council’s notice. We say give the bloke a try—the Empire could use a bit of pluck.

—The London Prattler

London, October 14, 1889
PENNER TOY AND GAMES
1:30 p.m. Monday

“WILL YOU CONTINUE
to help Alice? Regardless of what happens?” Tobias asked, worried by his father’s haggard appearance,
but worried even more that he would say no. “It’s not her fault who her father is.”

They were once more in the back of Bucky’s factory, but it was largely deserted. Bucky and his most loyal workers were out giving the news to the locals that the prince’s armies were only a day outside the city. Those not already involved in the skirmishes to the north and east of the city were to stand ready to rally. Tobias coughed, his lungs wet and aching.

“Of course.” Bancroft waved a hand. It was a curt, frustrated gesture. “Jeremy is my grandson. I’ll make sure he gets home to his family and that includes his mother.”

And then his father looked at him, his face a hard mask. He knew about the poison, but in typical fashion they’d talked around it far more than about it. “How are you feeling?”

Horrible
. The drugs that Dr. Watson had given him might have been helping but it hardly felt like it. The numbness that had begun in his fingers was spreading upward. His entire right hand was clumsy now, but that was only the half of it. He felt like every organ, every joint was preparing to collapse. “It’s not too bad.”

His father held his eyes, acknowledging and perhaps regretting all the missed opportunities for closeness between them. It would have been the perfect moment for a statement of affection, but that bridge had burned too long ago.

Tobias reached out as far as he was able. “I’m glad we’re on the same side in this affair.”

But talking about what passed between father and son was much harder than focusing on a concrete problem. Bancroft nodded and promptly changed the subject. “How are you coming with the devices?”

After the disaster with the malfunctioning aether distillation unit, Tobias had ordered all the Gold King’s war machines equipped with an override on all their major systems. These could be remotely activated and some even reprogrammed from remote, handheld units. “I remember the specifications for almost everything. But I’ve had to rely on Bucky’s workmen to construct them.” His hand had lost all
its dexterity. The pain of it went beyond inconvenience—as a maker, his clever fingers had defined him. “I don’t know if they’ll finish in time.”

“They will,” Bancroft said in that tone that had enforced treaties and ended careers. “I’ll make sure it happens.”

“Thank you.” Tobias swallowed, hating the fact that he was too weak to hunt for his son and remained confined in the factory. He’d tried to split his time and strength between searching for Jeremy and working on the devices, but he couldn’t hide his weakness from his wife anymore. “And thank you for helping Alice. The longer we search with no results, the more she’s suffering.”

“Keating is too smart a fox for the obvious. No doubt he has houses even Alice doesn’t know about. Where does he keep his property records?”

“In his main residence. There will be no chance of simply strolling through the door. He may be in hiding with his hostages, but the servants will be there.”

“I’m sure Alice still has a key.” Bancroft gave a wry smile. “She broke into my safe, after all. This should be easy.”

Tobias balked. “I don’t like putting her in danger. God knows what Keating would do if his men caught her snooping.”

“Give the girl a chance. It’s her father and her child. She knows that landscape far better than you or I.”

And yet Tobias could still picture her delicately freckled face white with fear as one of her father’s hulking Yellowbacks thrust an aether rifle in her stomach. His gut went cold. “Don’t tell me how to care for my wife.”

“Why not? Once upon a time you seemed to need the instruction.”

Tobias felt the barb twist, stirring up his own self-recriminations. He rose slowly from his seat. “Must you turn this into one of our futile sniping matches?”

“Damnation, Tobias!” Suddenly his father’s face was gray with grief and fury. He rose, too, and gripped his son’s shoulder, squeezing so hard that despite himself, Tobias flinched. Bancroft wore the look of a drowning man.

A beat passed between them. A suffocating, crippling moment pregnant with defeat. Tobias groped for something to say, but failed. They’d forgotten how to speak anything but angry words to each other.

And then whatever bound them together cracked under the monumental weight of their sorrow and regrets. With a stifled curse, Bancroft turned and left the room, all but breaking into a run.

Where, oh, where has the Gold King gone?

The wretched old villain has left with the dawn

With a scuttle of coal and a lamp full of oil

He’s left our good queen in the darkness to toil

—Drinking song, reprinted in
The London Prattler

London, October 14, 1889
MISS HYACINTH’S HOUSE OF PLEASURE
2:15 p.m. Monday

HYACINTH STOMPED DOWN THE STAIRS OF HER PLEASURE
house, fingering the whip at her belt. She played at punishment for a living, but at the moment she wanted to lash out in earnest. “Where is Mr. Tunbridge?” she demanded, each word a jagged shard of flint. She stopped at the third stair from the bottom, using the height to glare around her drawing room.

It was all but empty. Only Gareth, the useless young lout, lounged on the sofa. He was half pet, half dogsbody, and spent most of his free time eating her food. He was also one of the few she wouldn’t automatically savage when the mood was on her. He rose now, his eyes cautious. “Were you expecting him?”

“Of course I am. It is Tuesday, and it is two o’clock. He always comes for his beating at two.”

“A man of regular habits, then?”

“Like clockwork,” she said, biting off every syllable. “But
he is not here. And neither was Monsieur Dubois, nor yet again Lady Christopher. They are my top-drawer clients, so what is going on?” She looked around the empty drawing room, experiencing a moment of panic. “Where are any of my clients?”

Gareth gave a short, solemn nod. “I don’t know about t’others, but I had a word with the Frenchie.”

“With Dubois?” Hyacinth folded her arms across the elaborate bow adorning the front of her bodice. Her outfit was a startling pink striped with cream, the front of her skirts cut away to display her elaborately embroidered black stockings. Men liked fantasy, and she looked good in it.

Gareth nodded.

“What,” she asked, “could possibly be more enticing than me?”