The Iron Duke (13 page)

He knew that sound too well.

She rubbed her hands against her sleeves, as if she’d suddenly been struck with gooseflesh. “It’s an eerie noise.”

And damned close to the real thing. “Let’s look inside.”

Tired-looking and thin, the blond barker at the tent entrance brightened as he turned her way. When the inspector and the constable came with him, nervousness ticked over the barker’s features before she firmed them with bravado. She widened her eyes and dipped into the exaggerated pose of someone frozen in fear.

“They hunger,” she whispered hoarsely. “They eat the flesh from your bones and drink your marrow. The soulless zombies hunt even the Horde, and you won’t see another anywhere in England or the New World . . .
if
you’re lucky.”

Rhys hadn’t been. “How much?”

The blond straightened. “A denier each.”

Not English money, but the French currency that ruled the trade routes in the Old and New Worlds. The inspector hesitated and looked to the constable, who shook his head. Probably neither carried anything but pennies. Anything more in London would be an invitation for a pickpocket.

Fortunately, Rhys hadn’t had a purse lifted in years. He paid the barker, who waved the curtain aside with a flourish.

Her dramatic whisper followed him inside. “If you value your life, stay behind the lamps.”

He had to duck beneath the low canvas roof. Two gas lamps sat on the dirt floor, more than an arm’s length from the small cage at the back of the tent, throwing bright light through the iron bars and onto the thing crouched on filthy straw. Nude, its tangled and matted hair ripped out in chunks, it wasn’t as dirty as most zombies he’d seen. Perhaps the barker threw a bucket of water at it every week.

The zombie’s hissing gurgle became a low growl. Ruined lips drew back from sharp teeth. Spit and gore crusted its mouth.

He heard Newberry choke back an oath. The inspector said, “Avert your eyes, constable,” before stopping beside Rhys.

“It was a woman,” she murmured.

Rhys couldn’t read her reaction to it.
Fascination? Disgust?
His own response was familiar, though:
Kill it.

He’d have to use her weapons. While in England, Rhys only carried a dagger in his boot—which was useless against a zombie unless he sawed off its head with the blade. But he wouldn’t risk stepping that near to the thing, anyway.

The zombie threw its shoulder against the bars. The cage rattled. Growling, it clawed the air between them, black eyes fixed hungrily across the short distance.

The inspector turned, looking to the tent barker waiting at the entrance. “It’s illegal to bring them into England.”

“I didn’t bring it in, did I? It was a fat salvage trader who brought that thing in from Europe on his boat.”

The inspector appeared unmoved by that argument. The barker’s defiance vanished. She lifted her hands. “Me and my sisters, we’ve got seven little ones between us. The deniers we earn here barely keep us off the streets . . . and out of them other workhouses.”

With a sigh, the inspector faced the cage again. She tilted her head, as if trying to see better through the bars. “I’ve often wondered if the person is still in there.”

A living hell, if it was. Most of the zombies in Europe were originally the humans who’d been left behind after each nation fled to the Americas, escaping the Horde’s advancing war machines. But the Horde didn’t want to occupy the land; they wanted the resources. Their harvesting machines gathered those, and the Horde infected the remaining humans with nanoagents to prevent the nations who’d fled from returning and fighting for their territory.

But the zombie’s nanoagents weren’t like those infecting the buggers, and weren’t controlled by a tower. They acted like a disease, spread through a bite. The bodies they inhabited only hungered and hunted, never dying unless their brain was destroyed. This zombie could be two hundred and fifty years old, a woman’s mind trapped by the diseased bugs.

“Even during the Frenzies, or when the Horde locked us down and paralyzed our bodies . . . we were aware. We
knew
we were being controlled.” She paused. “But I suppose you remember how it was.”

Scarsdale had suggested that her mother hadn’t remembered. But Rhys wouldn’t mention that now. He simply said, “No.”

She glanced up at him. “Weren’t you from a crèche?”

“Yes. Caerwys.” When she looked at him blankly, he said, “County Clwyd. There until I was smuggled out of Wales at eight years of age.”

Smuggled out and sold to the Ivory Market, where he’d seen his first zombie in a cage, selling for a few gold sous. But there wasn’t much that couldn’t be bought and sold along that stretch of West African coast. Both a zombie and a boy were on the lowest end of the scale.

“Oh.” The inspector blinked. Her gaze searched his face, as if trying to find pieces of him to put together.
Good.
He wanted her curious. “Then I suppose you would have been too young to be affected by a Frenzy.”

He wouldn’t have been affected, anyway. He’d never been controlled by his bugs. But he knew what it was to be controlled, and he’d never liked it.

She stepped closer to the cage, standing between the two lamps. Rhys stopped himself from yanking her back. The zombie battered itself against the cage, hissing, growling, biting the bars in fury.

Bending slightly, as if she wanted to look into its eyes, she said, “Some believe that the nanoagents kill the person and use the body. That a zombie is like a steamcoach driven by the diseased bugs. Not thinking, not feeling.”

“If she’s lucky.”

“Yes. And I’ve heard that New World scientists are trying to concoct a cure.”

“Some of them. Some scientists are hoping to concoct immortality—and to sell it.”

She threw him a glance over her shoulder. “Are you familiar with them?”

“I’ve funded research and expeditions.”

“Have they discovered anything? A cure?”

“Not yet.”

“Then I’m sorry for this one.”

Stepping back, she drew her gun and aimed it into the cage. Surprise rammed through him. Only a moment ago, Rhys had been certain she’d soon begin weeping over the zombie’s plight, and wondering if he should return later to kill it and save her the distress of witnessing the thing’s death.
Confounding woman.
He wanted to drag her close and kiss her senseless. He moved aside to give her room, instead.

“No!” The barker shoved past him, rushing in front of the gun. She spread her hands wide, as if to prevent the inspector from shooting around her. “No!”

“Stand aside,” the inspector said. “With one mistake—if someone comes too close, or the cage fails—then your sisters and your children will be dead.
All of England
will be.”

Panic widened the woman’s eyes. “We’re careful.”

“Stand aside.”

“She’s not real! It’s a feeble-minded woman we found on the street. She pisses on herself. We earn our money.”

“Then step closer to the cage.”

The woman hesitated.

“Step back to the cage, close enough that she can bite you. Or step aside.”

Tears welled up, spilled over. “We’ve got nothing else. If I don’t earn our money here, I don’t bring anything home.”

“I’ll count to three.”

“Please, don’t—”

“One.”

“You can’t—”

“Back to the cage,” the inspector repeated, “or step to the side. Two.”

“—please we need—”

“Three.”

With a shriek, the barker flung herself to the side, falling to her knees beside the gas lamp. The inspector fired. A dark hole exploded open between sunken breasts.

Convulsing against the bars, the zombie raged, spitting blood. Rhys stepped forward. Folding his hand over the inspector’s, he adjusted her aim.

“The head,” he said. “Always the head.”

With a nod, she finished it off.

“And what now, you Horde cunt?” The woman screamed from the floor, pulling at her hair. “We earned the right to that thing, you bloody fucking jade whore! That fat old trader had me and my sisters on our backs. And we
earned
it.”

The inspector holstered her gun. “Then find that trader and put him in the cage. You’ll make money enough—fat old men in England are almost as rare as zombies.” She looked to Newberry. “See that the body is burned. Then find us at Baxter’s.”

Newberry glanced with some anxiety to Rhys, who reassured the constable with a look before following the inspector outside. Oh, yes, he’d watch over her.

And he wouldn’t let her away from him.

Mina emerged from the tent, lifting her hand against the blinding sun. The air seemed thin and tasteless. A deep breath left her light-headed, sick.

The barker’s screams from inside the tent rose to a higher pitch, driving like a nail into Mina’s head. She started down the path, leaving them behind. Trahaearn would catch up any moment, probably with just two of his absurdly long strides, and she damned well wouldn’t let him see how that thing and that woman’s pleas had shaken her to the core.

And no more of this tarrying about. A cabstand lay beyond all of these tents and stalls, and any driver worth a penny would know how to find the admiral.

Not relishing the thought of being crowded into a tiny seat with the duke, she passed a cheap spider-rickshaw and stopped at a steamcoach with the top folded back. A youngish man with a flop of ginger hair perched on the driver’s bench.

Mina withdrew her purse. “Will you take me to Admiral Baxter’s residence, sir?”

The driver’s eyes narrowed on her, lips curling back in a sneer. For a moment, she thought he’d refuse to let her hire him. Then his gaze shifted beyond her, something like awe passed over his face, and he nodded.

There were days when she found it difficult not to hate everyone in bloody England. Mina choked out her thank-you and clambered into the coach, wishing she could cosh the driver upside the head with her billy club.

And she wished Andrew were here. He’d always had a knack for making her laugh herself out of these moods. But only the stars above knew where Andrew was, and instead she had the damned Iron Duke, and a ramshackle coach that dipped and creaked alarmingly as he stepped inside, as if four men had boarded rather than just one. He seated himself beside her and began watching her again, lord of all he bleeding surveyed—and taking up more room than any man had a right to. Even Newberry didn’t push into her space, and he outweighed the duke by two stone.

Well, he could peer at her all he wanted. She’d stare ahead at the ginger skull she’d like to bash in.

His voice sounded low and alarmingly near her ear. “Thank you, inspector, for saving me the trouble of killing the zombie with my knife.”

She glanced at him sharply. With the sun behind him, his face was all in shadow, but he was smiling. Maybe laughing. Who could tell over the engine’s racket? She lifted her voice. “What would you have used?”

“Your guns. A machete, if I’d thought to carry one to the Blacksmith’s this morning.” His smile faded. “I need something to call you other than ‘inspector.’ ”

“No, sir. You don’t.”

When he shook his head, the tiny gold hoops through the upper curves of his ears glinted through his dark hair. Such a peculiar place for jewelry. But she supposed there were many odd places that a person could pierce their body, if they wished to.

The Iron Duke probably had.
Primitive scoundrel.

“I do,” he countered. “And I know your names: Wilhelmina Elizabeth Wentworth. They don’t fit. What do your friends call you?”

“Stubborn.” She glanced away from him when his laughing smile returned. “You may continue to call me inspector.”

“And you may call me Rhys.”

“I won’t.”

“Even when I’m in your bed?”

Mina dropped her hand to her gun.

“I agree. That was too brazen.” He leaned in toward her, taking up so much space she could hardly draw a breath. “I should have said
my
bed, yes?”

Shaking her head, she looked forward again. Not quite so blood-thirsty, this time. She’d still have liked to give the driver a good whack, but bludgeoning him didn’t seem as necessary now.

On to other things, then—such as whether there would be bludgeoning when they reached the admiral’s house. “How well do you get on with Baxter?”

“He’s been a friend to me for years.”

“No.” Disbelieving, she searched his expression for a lie, and didn’t find one. “But he forcibly conscripted you.”

“Not forcibly. I was on a slave ship bound for the Lusitanian coal mines. Even the Royal Navy is better than a mine shaft.”

“As a slave? No. The newssheets have said you were on that slave ship’s
crew
. Words quoted from your mouth.”

“Those rags took my words as they saw fit. And they didn’t want a story of a boy enslaved. So they suggest that I was a slaver.”

Mina gaped at him. “And you don’t care?”

He shrugged. “It’s a useful lie. The alternative is giving those who want to destroy me a picture of a weak young boy, chained in a hold.”

“A lie for your enemies.” She shook her head. “I can think of many people who aren’t your enemies, and who would be inspired, picturing you as a weak young boy who rose out of his chains to save us.”

“To save you?” His face hardened. “
That
is a lie that will never come from me, inspector.”

She looked blindly away from him. Something had grabbed hold of her innards and twisted, hurting from her stomach to her throat. And she’d forgotten why they’d begun speaking of these . . . lies.

“Why do you tell me the truth now?”

“Because you asked me.”

Mina wasn’t certain if she wanted to again. “All right. And so Baxter is your friend. What kind of man is he?”