Eterna and Omega (19 page)

“Did you think you could not trust me with this information, Your Majesty?” He spoke gently, allowing concern to edge into his voice.

The regent sighed. “I haven't really known what to do this whole time. England has a responsibility, to her Empire, to be at the fore of every new development. How could I not see Moriel as a chance to turn an evil seed into something good for the Empire?” She stared up at him, an empress looking a bit helpless—not something Black wanted to see.

Denbury hadn't been wrong, seeing the reflection of evil in the queen's aura. The poor woman was guilty by association. He could not think she'd meant genuine harm in keeping Moriel alive, but harm had been done nonetheless. He had been lied to outright, and he needed full leave to erase the damage.

A man of hope, deep in his heart, Black knew he could not ask a man like Spire to continue on in such a compromised atmosphere; he'd have a fit about the Moriel business. Denbury would be beside himself, possibly moved to new violence. The question was, would he tell them? Should he? He had to. They deserved the truth.

“You've
proof
of Moriel's death, Your Majesty?” Black asked.

“I saw firsthand. The gore…” She shuddered and turned as white as the lace around her neck.

“You weren't shielded from such horror, Your Majesty?”

“I had to be sure it was him,” she insisted. “I wasn't proud of keeping him alive any more than you are. I had to take responsibility, I had to know.…”

“Understood, your highness.” Black took a careful breath and continued, “With all due respect, you're sure it was Moriel?”

The queen was aghast at being questioned. “Who else could it be?”

“These men—Moriel, Tourney, and any of those associated with them—are terribly crafty. They stop at nothing; no human life besides their own is of value. One cannot tell what they might do, in time of need,” Black explained.

The queen seemed unsure how to respond.

Black pressed her. “Did you have anyone see to the scene of Moriel's corpse?”

“I had the horror entirely cleaned up, of course,” she replied, as if there had been no other option. “Why wouldn't I?”

Spire would have punched something if he had been present, Black was sure. The queen would make a terrible policeman.

“No one is supposed to know he was alive to begin with,” the queen said. “The entire country would be up in arms.” She looked at him steadily, but he heard the weakness in her voice—she was justifying her actions to herself as much as to him. “You know I did not believe in his ideology. I merely thought some of his science might make
use
of his evil in a way.”

“His ideology was woven into every way he sought to bend ‘science' to his will, Your Majesty,” Black responded. “If it were up to him, we'd lose any progress humanity has made in the past centuries and exist literally in the Dark Ages. Moriel and other unnoble nobles would hold the world on its knees.”

As a nobleman, that nobility should be respected was a principle by which Lord Black most certainly lived, one that he benefited from. That Moriel and his like should live as feudalistic dictators was nothing short of laughable. That the queen had indulged this man's lunacy … It was inconceivable.

The queen's evident discomfort and embarrassment gave him all the permission he needed to continue his work with his team as he saw fit.

“Fix whatever it is that has been broken, Lord Black,” she demanded. “And let's get back to a more positive task with greater hope.”

“Greater hope, and less evil, indeed. Good day, Your Majesty.”

*   *   *

Lord Black went straight to Spire's office at Omega headquarters, where he found Lord Denbury concluding the tale of his own entanglement with the Master's Society. The two men were a good deal into Spire's decanter of scotch and bowed their heads to Lord Black as he entered.

“My mother rejected Moriel as a suitor in their youth,” Denbury explained, “so he swore a vendetta on my family. I admit that I and my associates dealing with the attacks all thought the Society business more a personal grudge than grand plan.”

The fear of a larger web was evident on the young man's handsome face.

As Black came farther into the room, he could see Spire examining his expression, and without a word he got up and poured them all a drink.

“Out with it, milord, if you please,” Spire stated, handing the nobleman his glass. Black took a stiff swig.

“Moriel was never executed,” Black stated. He watched, pained for the boy, as the statement hit Lord Denbury like a bullet. “He died only recently, in the same manner as Tourney. At least, according to the queen. Whether she can be believed is certainly why you saw that aura, Lord Denbury, and for this news I am
grievously
sorry.”

Lord Denbury, whom Black knew to be a scholar and a doctor, a young man who had devoted his life to helping others, looked utterly murderous. It grieved Black to see, as there was nothing so tragic to his mind as a kind, beautiful man driven to desperation. Like his dear Francis …

“Never. Executed…” Denbury's words were knife sharp. It seemed to take everything in his being not to hurl the snifter at the wall or crush it with his fist.

“I make no excuse for Her Majesty,” Black continued. “She said she had hoped Moriel could shed light on immortality. I told her that knowledge from a source so polluted by evil is without virtue.”

“Lord Black,” Denbury said, seething, “if you wish me not to commit or commission gross acts of treason upon she who holds the scepter, please tell me you will fix this damnable error
immediately
and set the fumbling queen to rights.”

Black stared into the man's arresting eyes.

“I pledge my life to it, Lord Denbury,” he said firmly. “I truly do. If anything is left of the Master's Society, it will be done for once and for all.”

Black turned to Spire. “To hell with anything but this directive, Mr. Spire.”

“I'll drink to that,” Spire said, lifting his glass. He turned to Lord Denbury. “For what it's worth, I, too, pledge my life to it, milord.”

“Your pledge may not be a mere toast, gentlemen,” Denbury said coldly. “It might be a promise heaven needs come collect, lest there be hell on earth.”

 

CHAPTER

SEVEN

The sun woke Clara, though she'd rather have lain in bed awhile. A shaft of light caught the third of the sample bottles of the Ward that she'd brought home after their adventure with Mr. Stevens. The refracted beam, thrown onto the cherrywood of her writing desk, glowed like an amplified piece of soul.

To be safe, after what had happened to the Eterna researchers, she shouldn't have any such elements in her home, lest they summon the forces that had turned the tide so horrifically on those men. She comforted herself with the fact the senator's house had not been made a ready path for evil—unlike the laboratory where Louis and his companions had met their fate—and was carefully Warded. Still, she told herself, these things should be stored at the office and she readied for her day.

Bishop had not been home, nor had he left a note or message with their housekeeper. Clara was still wondering what he was up to when she arrived at the office, bobbing her head once in greeting to Lavinia, who seemed utterly aghast, lost in the pages of a penny dreadful and could afford her friend only a little black-lace-gloved wave.

The guards were always so silent she nearly forgot about them sitting sentry near the door, but as she rounded the stairs she looked back to them, content to see that they were not interested in anything but exterior threats, their focus out the glass panes of the front windows.

Again, she nearly found herself bound up in rope but was able to disable the trip wire via a gas lamp fixture at the top of the office stairs before it was too late.

A telegram awaited her upstairs, lying on her desk atop the files all at different angles. Her stomach dropped as she read it, realizing that Rupert wouldn't soon be home or at the desk opposite her in the commission's office—one he had rarely occupied until lately. She hadn't realized until this moment how much she'd enjoyed having him across the room.…

C: LEFT ON OVERNIGHT TRAIN WEST TO SPEAK WITH AMENABLE FRIENDS. CONVINCING COLLEAGUES TO WARD THEIR DISTRICTS PROVING DIFFICULT. PRESS NY CONGRESSMEN: IMPLEMENT SECURITY SCREENINGS AT PORT OR INDUSTRY PER POTENTIAL THREATS, NOTE THE COMPANY APEX IF YOUR INSTINCT SO BIDS.

She groaned. If there was one thing she hated, it was politicking.

Glad she had worn one of her more businesslike dresses in folds of gray linen and black detailing, she needed to be elegant but serious. She needed to be considered a woman, not a frilly young thing, she didn't need to waste time on apparel—how much of a woman's day could be spent changing dresses?—but she did finish her look by affixing a small boater hat to the side of braids she piled atop her head with enough pins to withstand a storm, and took out her best pair of seed-pearl-adorned gloves. It would do neither her nor Bishop any good if she were not considered a consummate lady.

For the rest of the day, with the help of their diligent but bored driver, Leonard, Clara made the rounds of all the congressmen with whom Bishop had an even remotely cordial relationship.

Her first call, on Congressman Connor, was unfortunately indicative of how far she'd get with anyone.

“Well now, dear miss,” said the portly man, who wore a suit more fine than his Fourth Ward district could possibly afford, “what might I be able to do for you?”

“Congressman, I am here on behalf of Senator Rupert Bishop to ask for your help in intervening on behalf of companies in your district that may have been infiltrated by a serious threat to national security.”

The congressman made a face. “What threat is that? Why don't I know about it?”

“I'm afraid I am unable to discuss many of the details, at the senator's order,” Clara said, aware that most politicians had no knowledge of the supernatural—nor any interest in it.

“Then I'm unable to authorize anything. I think Bishop's a fine man, but I don't put any of my men on any kind of payroll without just cause.”

That was patently untrue. Tammany put countless men on countless pointless payrolls all over the city.

“Miss Templeton, tell the senator to come asking for things himself. If he wants something done in Washington, he can't send a girl to do his job.”

“No, of course not, I don't suppose he can,” she said with a distinct bite as she rose.

Clara thought of dear Emily Roebling, who, after her husband became ill, was left with the task of convincing both engineers and city officials of the needs of that glorious bridge that would someday connect Brooklyn and Manhattan. At a society function earlier in the year, they'd discussed being the go-between, a pendulum between sets of stubborn men, doubly dismissed. Clara was exceedingly tired of not being heard or seen. Only one man seemed to truly see her for herself—and he was dead and haunting her.

Stopping at a telegraph office not far from her own, she dismissed the driver, then shot off a message to Bishop at the usual Cincinnati hotel where he stayed when on business.

B: NO LUCK. TAKE CARE OF THEM YOURSELF. YOUR POWERS ARE THE ONLY WAY.

When Clara turned the corner onto Fifth Avenue again, a spot of yellow on the sidewalk caught her eye. Her hand went to her mouth at the sight of a small, unconscious songbird, with beautiful yellow, gray, and black detailing on its tiny body.

Clara had always been fond of birds. She'd identified every species that frequented Green-Wood Cemetery where the Templeton clan was buried. Birds were symbols of the spirit, of transcendence, of delicate beauty. She bent over the northern warbler, to see if she could help.

The little creature was dead.

Clara's frustrated, beleaguered heart quivered at this fresh assault. But she could not leave the poor darling there, so ignominiously on the sidewalk, unheeded by Manhattan's busy passersby.

She gently scooped the body into her gloved palm. It was so light, a magical little being. She wondered how it had died—perhaps it had flown senselessly against a window, the ever climbing skyscraper invading the territory of the winged.…

It was more than she could bear. Clara cried over the dead soul. Her larger task could wait; she had to bury the tiny singer. She crossed the street into the park. Her tears fell onto its bright feathers as she unbuttoned and slid off her right glove to scoop earth aside under a flowering bush. She set the nearly weightless body in the shallow grave and covered its bright plumage—how soft and delicate were the feathers—with honest brown dirt.

“May you sing joyously in heaven, you beautiful little thing,” Clara whispered through tears, “watched over by Saint Francis forever.”

If she wasn't careful, such would be the souls of New Yorkers, of northerners, southerners, all made equal in the end, leveled under the eyes of a vengeful violence, all of them little birds against windows. She felt as fragile as the warbler, yet she knew she had to be as strong as the building that had inadvertently struck it down.

Her walk back to her offices was a solemn funeral march for that lost bit of feathered song.

Clara let herself into the building with her new set of keys for the multiple locks. The guards, who knew her to be one of four allowed admittance whenever they pleased, did not get up to help her in. She was glad not to be made a fuss over, as it kept the building from attracting more interest should the guards be outside, though she had yet to determine whether their presence made her more or less nervous.

As she entered, the smaller of the two men, dark haired and dark eyed, handed her a bright white square envelope.