Agamemnon Frost and the Crown of Towers (11 page)

“This ship is about to break apart.” Mason wanted to return the brief contact, but he couldn’t. The wires holding him, biting deep into every inch and binding him to the workings of the ship, couldn’t be broken. He had to hold the screeching Martians and propel the ship across impossible space. The end could be counted in heartbeats now.

“Please, Frost. I can keep the doorway back open. You
have
to live.”

Frost ignored his plea, stepping into the chamber and pushing his fingers into Mason’s hair, threading between the copper filaments feeding into the skull. “You’re mine.” His lips ghosted Mason’s, the heat and promise there making his spiked heart pound. The bliss of touch drove down the pain. “I...” Frost smiled and closed his eyes. “I love you. There. I can say it. Finally.” He pressed his lips together. “I couldn’t let you go into the dark without knowing that truth.”

“Frost—”

“Shh...” He brushed another kiss against Mason’s mouth. “We won and we have each other. I say that’s a good result.” His smile was sly. “Better odds than I gave us, I have to admit.”

Even as the bitterness of time robbed tightened Mason’s chest, he had to laugh. The clock to their end was ticking fast. Only twenty seconds remained. “We did. We won.”

The creak of a spire broke Mason’s attention from Frost. It fell. Mason watched it, the thrum of the ship deepening, as it too calculated the path of the falling spike.

“Watch,” he murmured and felt Frost’s satisfaction as the great dagger of metal cleaved the shrieking Pandarus and Priam in two. “And...the day improved.”

A dark smile touched Frost’s mouth. “That it did.”

“Ten seconds.” But he jerked forward as the wires broke from his skin, grunting with the fierce pain of the tendrils pulling from his brain. “What...?”

“Run!”

“What?” Mason staggered as Frost yanked him from the chamber. Around him the ship groaned and more metal creaked. It was beyond saving. In only eight seconds its own energy would consume it. “Where are we going?”

“The
koile.
” Frost dragged him towards the cracked wall, its innards sparking. “There has to be
koile
in this room. Find it. Get us home. The ship released you. It wants you to live.”

“I...” The surety of knowing everything when his brain had controlled all aspects of the ship was fading. But deep within its heart, the clock still beat. Five seconds. They had mere seconds but his mind was a mess. He waved his hand. “There. I think there.”

Frost yanked him towards the wall.

The ship exploded.

13. The Surface of Mars and Other Curiosities

Mason hit the floor. Hard. He rolled, dusty flagstones catching elbows and knees and tangling him up in the length of his Martian robe. He lay staring up at the vaulted brick ceiling, feeling his heart drum. He was alive.
Alive.

Beside him Frost groaned and laughter broke from Mason. “You do know how we saved the world, don’t you?”

Frost turned his head, unwilling it seemed to make any other movement.

“Your cravat pin.” Mason reached across the short space that separated them and repinned the sliver of metal through the silk tie. “Damn thing irritated me for hours.”

Frost’s gaze held him and the promise there, the sudden curl of heat forced the amusement from Mason. Frost’s smile was dark. “So we saved the world, not with machines nor cunning but the perfect misapplication of fashion?”

Laughter broke from them both...but a door slammed somewhere above them and they jumped to their feet. Mason knew this dusty cellar, his stomach turning over at the metal sheets fixed to one wall and the great
mechane
still clawed to the ceiling. They were under Holt Hall. The room in which he had been transfigured.

The clatter of boots on the stairs gave them warning before armed soldiers burst in from the narrow stairwell. The three stopped and stared, looking from Mason to Frost and back to Mason’s torn robe.

Frost snapped his fingers. “Your
ektaxis.
Quickly.” He took it from the fumbling fingers of the sergeant and ran his thumb over the controls. “Nestor?” He wet his lips. “Achilles, reporting.”

“
By God
,
you’re both alive!
” Their commander’s grinning face rose as a grey shadow above the plate of copper. “
And Pandarus?
”

“We saw him cut in two. The Crown of Towers is destroyed.” Frost ran his hand over his dusty hair. “We rescued a number of people. Broke them of his control. Can the ’ships above St. George’s Hall see them?”

Nestor turned, his ghostly image falling away. Frost paced and Mason leaned against the cellar wall, pushing down the now soured surge of joy. He had wanted Frost to himself just a little while longer. He tugged at the sleeve of his thin robe, watching the grit drift to the floor. Frost’s favourite coat had been lost with the explosion of the ship.

He felt the eyes of the soldiers on him and their quick glances to the intricacies of the
mechane
that had started him on his fateful journey. All he wanted was a quiet moment in a room with Frost. He’d said he
loved
him—

“
They’ve sighted perhaps ten individuals—men and women—sitting on the steps.
”

Mason pushed himself away from the wall. “Just ten? I released hundreds of
koile
.”

“
I
can connect you
...” Nestor’s image faded back, mixing and blurring with columns until the image of the Hall stood out against the copper. The picture blurred and sharpened and in a series of clicks and blinks, the device focused on the run of steps before the Hall.

Menelaus was obvious, his dark hair tangled, with his arm around his sobbing wife. Next to him sat Theodora, with her back straight and staring blankly off towards the nearby railway station. Other
kardax
and automata had slumped nearby, Mason recognising them from sketches and photographs Station X had made from those they suspected of being transfigured. So few...

“
Koile
must need the Martians to survive. We do not.”

Mason closed his eyes. So many more dead. But they would be the last. The very last. “As Achilles said, I believe I broke the hold Pandarus had on their minds, Commander.”

Nestor’s image floated back. “
Yes.
Reports are coming in from the prisoners held at Station X.
They have regained command of their own bodies.
” Nestor wiped his hand over his hair. Mason caught the tremor that shook it. “It’s over.”

Frost grinned at him. “That it is.” He paused, looking to Mason. “Send a ’ship for us, Nestor. And load it with my wardrobe trunks.” He touched the sleeve of Mason’s flimsy robe and his lip curled. “I refuse to let you wear Martian fashions
ever
again.”

* * *

Rather than a quiet room with Frost, Mason found himself in too short a time on an airship filled with the command staff of Station X and the rescued
kardax
and automata. The latter were subdued, still caught in the years of control and horror. Though Mason couldn’t quickly forget how Theodora flung herself into Frost’s arms and how he returned that fierce embrace...

Mason found the sanctuary of the ’ship’s observation car, simply him and a glass-screened view of the shifting countryside far below. The throb of the engines worked through his bones. Sanctuary of a sort.

“Mason, there you are. There’s something you should see.”

Frost stood in the doorway as immaculate as ever in his grey travelling suit. There was no faulty pin now to draw his attention. Only the reminder that Frost had again shaved and dressed himself in the cramped sleeping room perched on top of the vast airship. Mason’s help had not been required. They’d saved the world—and it was none the wiser—yet he had lost so much.

He pushed back his maudlin thoughts. For the time being, he was still a soldier for Station X. He gave Frost a short smile and followed him silently along the gantry to the passenger lift.

The space was tight and he fought not to breathe in the so-wanted aromas of sandalwood and vanilla. He stood with his hands behind his back, his fingers clenched tight until they pained him, and focused on the narrow slit of the window. The silver skin of the airship and its metal framework flowed by at a sedate pace. Mason cursed it.

“Aren’t you curious?”

Mason frowned. “About?”

The lift juddered to a halt and the door slipped back on quiet hinges. Frost gave him one of the dark smiles that caught his breath in his chest. “Now you’ll have to wait and see.”

He led the way to the small operations room behind the sleeping quarters. One of the crew offered a salute and opened the door. The familiar thrum of Martian technology rubbed against Mason’s skin and he followed Frost inside.

A row of electro-stenographs lined the back wall, operators tapping away on the hard keys. Images and words flashed over the clear oblong screens, sinking into darkness to be replaced with more in quick succession. Each operator wore a bulky headset and spoke rapidly into a horn-shaped mouth piece.

“We are never out of contact,” Frost murmured. He placed a hand on the shoulder of a young operator and she looked up. “Bring it up again, please.”

The girl’s fingers were a blur on the black lacquered keys, and gradually a reddish image grew out of the shadow.

“What am I looking at?”

Mason blinked. He knew the shapes focusing and fading on the screen. But in his mind, he was closer, his memory filled with the image of bleak desert, of hillsides littered with rock, reminding him of his time in Afghanistan. The blurred image on the screen was Mars.

“Wait...”

The screen flashed white and the human operator flinched at the flare. A heartbeat later, the image of the red planet returned.

“Confirmation of the destruction of the Crown of Towers. I thought you’d like to witness it.” Frost tilted his head. “We’ve been able to compare smaller energy readings from earlier in the month. Three of them.”

“The hollow ships.”

Frost’s smile was sharp. “Mars is simply
littered
with broken parts.”

“They built their ships from a race of people with metal in their bones.”

Mason stared at the image of Mars before him with its flat swirls of red and black. The memory of being the ship, of wearing it like his own skin, pushed over him. The destruction of the hollow ships had pierced a hole in Pandarus’s control. Putting Mason at the heart of the larger ship had been an opportunity the vanished race could grab. And each ship was linked to the other. He’d felt that vast connection.

“They killed every last one of them to make their ships. And I believe...” Mason wiped his mouth, the relief a surprise. “I believe the destroying of one destroyed them all.”

Frost frowned. “
Koile
is useless without the metal to fill the shadow-forms. With no ships, crossing the immense distances between planets becomes an impossibility. The Martians are trapped wherever they are right now.”

“They weren’t Martians, Frost.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Did you find a better name?”

“No...”

“Then Martians they will remain.” He patted the operator’s shoulder, murmured his thanks and waved Mason to leave the operations room. “We can return to the observation car.”

Yes, he was being granted the time alone with Frost he’d craved. Now it twisted his insides. The ride down to the small car was made in silence, Frost lounging against the rail of the lift.

The small car was still empty and Frost closed and locked the door with a definite clunk that Mason heard even over the throb and drone of the nearby engines.

Frost leaned on the deep mahogany windowsill. The fresh air from the outside streamed through the room from the ventilation slits. Mason joined him, the almost-brush of their shoulders a torment. Beneath them the land rolled away, wreathed in clouds and the patchwork of ice mixing with woodland, fallow fields and green pastures.

“What happens now?”

“We land at Station X. We’re debriefed. We debrief the remaining transfigured people. Then Nestor opens his vast cellars to celebrate our victory. We receive knighthoods. Possibly stretching to a peerage...”

“With us?”

Mason’s question was quiet and he steeled himself for the ending of the time between them. The change of heart. Frost had declared his love when he thought both of them would die. But now they were very much alive with a life that could stretch to who knew how long. Theodora was returned to Frost. Sane. And more than ready to be his wife.

“Mason...” Frost sighed. He clenched and unclenched his gloved fingers, keeping his face to the clouds.

Mason’s gaze flicked over his perfect profile, the pain in his chest crushing him. He’d never felt love before. Not like this. He couldn’t continue to work with and for Frost. It was impossible.

“I’m not letting you go.”

“You should. You know how I feel. And what you said...” Mason blew out a slow breath and the glass before him fogged. He would admit no more. They could part with the rest unsaid. It was safer.

“Theodora will stay on at Station X. She...” Frost winced, but he didn’t turn away from the view. “She formally asked me to end our engagement. It seems I have a rival.”

“Frost, I’m sorry.” And he was. Theodora was his chance of a normal life. Or as normal as two transfigured people could grasp at.

“Captain Beresford made a marked impression on her.” He shrugged. “So I’m a jilted man.” He lifted an eyebrow. “But in all honesty, with Theodora’s mind returned to her, I would have released her from our betrothal. She wouldn’t have found any happiness with me.”

Mason touched Frost’s sleeve. A light caress when he wanted to hold the man and promise that the pain would fade. The irony wasn’t lost on him. “So what will you do now?”

Frost straightened. “I think I’ll travel. I have a hankering for Venice.”

Mason said nothing.

“You will of course come with me.”

“Frost...”

“Not as my valet.” Frost’s golden-brown eyes held that little hint of wickedness that wound want through Mason’s flesh faster than fire. “We could have several lifetimes together.” He touched Mason’s cheek, his thumb stroking it, and the familiar crack of lightning sparked under Mason’s skin. Frost’s voice was low and soft. “You’re mine. Body and soul, Edgar Mason. As I am yours.” His thumb brushed his lips in the mirror of a kiss. “Agreed?”

Mason stared at him, his heart in his throat. All that he wanted to do was grab Frost and kiss him. Hard and fast. Because Frost was
his.
He glanced at the locked car door, his pulse thudding. Anyone could come looking for them, see the interior of the car through the porthole window of the wooden door. But he couldn’t let the precious moment simply slide away, unmarked. And Frost...Frost was worth the risk.

Mason kissed him. He tasted of the celebratory brandy he’d shared with his brother and the salt-sweetness of his own lips. Mason groaned, deepening the kiss, pressing Frost against the edge of the sill, the heat, the strength of the man’s body driving desire through his flesh.

“Mason...”

Frost’s low groan whipped his need and also brought him to his senses. Not here. Not now. But
definitely
later. That last thought was also reflected in Frost’s hot gaze. Even saving the world didn’t give them greater freedom. Nestor, Station X, Theodora and Frost’s family were doing enough by looking the other way. He and Frost couldn’t ask for more.

Mason stepped back and licked his lips, his chest lifting at the trace of the other man that lingered there. “Agreed. Body and soul.”

Frost sucked in a quick breath, his eyes glistening. His hand trembled as he traced a brief line along Mason’s jaw. “Of course...” He swallowed and the brightest grin broke from him. Sudden and beautiful. “We
must
do something about your wardrobe.”

Mason returned his smile. “Of course.”

Mason
,
beloved of Frost.
Yes, he could happily live with that for a
very
long time.

* * * * *