The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle) (29 page)

‘I can give no explanations; that is neither my concern nor my role. You have seen how he kills, how ruthless he is; how did you put it? “Without qualm.” He is heartless indeed. He has plagued cities, manipulated and twisted the stone they are made of; but this city has remained always a pull to him, his love and his hatred, as if some of it entered his blood when he died - for I firmly believe that Sasso is no longer alive nor human in the sense of the word.

‘Following his . . . transformation, he travelled across Europe, murdering, mostly women, although anyone who irritated him was a target, anyone who looked and saw. His victims were all of a type, resembling Selene, all beauties in their ways. It took a long time to find him, to catch him, cage him like the monster he has become. The Church took responsibility for him, put him away in Isalia, where he was studied and kept. He eats the stone, Lyle. He eats it to control it; they sealed him in a coffin of stone, strong enough to contain him, but of a mineral he had never tasted and could not control, and left him to weaken, to grow powerless, together with his own demented mind.’

‘They sealed him alive?’ Lyle’s voice was low.

‘Indeed so.’

‘For how long?’

Lord Lincoln didn’t answer.

‘
For how long?’

‘Sixty-three years.’

‘And Ignatius Caryway let him out?
Here?
’

‘So it would appear. My agents were unable to prevent it.’

Lyle shook his head. ‘My God,’ he whispered. ‘No wonder he’s mad.’ He looked up sharply. ‘All right, now the honest answers, because you have deceived me all the way and now we’re all going to pay the consequences. First, who are you?’ An accusing finger pointed at the quiet Chinese man sitting in the armchair.

The man smiled. It was an unnerving smile, wide, bright, friendly and somehow shark-like. ‘I am Mr Lingdao, sir. I was invited here by his lordship because I and my people also have an interest in the activities of Mr Sasso.’

‘Who are your people?’

Feng Darin cleared his throat and said, ‘We represent the interests of the Emperor overseas. His more . . . unlikely interests, shall we say?’

‘You were involved with the Tseiqin,’ snapped Lyle, not taking his eyes off the amused face of Mr Lingdao. ‘You came here to destroy the Fuyun Plate, the only thing that could give them power. But you weren’t working with Lord Lincoln then; why now?’

‘On the contrary,’ said Mr Lingdao. ‘If you consider, you will find our aims were the same. We both desired to prevent the Tseiqin achieving a power that was not rightfully theirs, and both realized that your kind co-operation was beneficial to this aim. Our methods were disparate, but we have never found any cause for disagreement, his lordship and ourselves.’

‘Is Lucan Sasso such a threat you would have Feng Darin trail me across London, again, and risk his life, again, in the shadows? ’

‘Not immediately a threat to the Emperor,’ replied Mr Lingdao, ‘but in this matter, Lord Lincoln requested our assistance. ’

‘
Why?
’

‘Because,’ said Lord Lincoln mildly, ‘Mr Lingdao and his associates have the stone blade of Selene.’

CHAPTER 22

Lyle stormed through the Great Exhibition, Tess, Thomas and Tate struggling to keep up with him, Feng Darin in flustered tow. ‘Horatio! You don’t know what you’re doing!’

‘I know exactly what I’m doing! I’m putting Tess and Thomas on the first train out of this damn city, going back to my lab and cooking up enough nitroglycerin to turn
bloody
Hampstead and its
bloody
occupants with their
bloody
good manners into a giant smoking crater!’

There was a little ‘hurrah!’ from Tess, hastily muted.

Feng Darin thrust himself in front of Lyle as they neared the door. ‘Listen to me!
Listen!
’

Lyle stopped, an unimpressed look on his face. ‘Yes?’ he snapped.

‘If you go out there, it will be a matter of minutes before Lucan finds you. You heard what Lincoln said: that . . . creature . . . kills without compunction. He will feel your feet on the stones and hunt you down.’

‘Then we’ll bloody fly! It won’t take long to fix the plane. We’ll launch it from Greenwich in hours, if we have to.’ Lyle started forward, pushing past Feng Darin.

‘It’s not like you to run away, Lyle.’

Lyle froze, hand on the door, then spun round and grabbed Feng by the collar, dragging him up with surprising strength. His eyes were burning, his hands shaking with anger and fatigue. ‘
You
listen to
me
. Lincoln thinks he’s won me, knows me, understands what pushes me into each new farce or danger, thinks he knows how to make me bend left or bend right. But you,
you
should know better.’

He pushed the door open, hurried the children out into the cold, dim air, took a deep breath of it after the enclosure of the dome, looked up at the sky, and let out the long breath he hadn’t realized that he’d been holding. At his feet, Tate sniffed the air, his tail beginning to wag.

‘How will you survive the night?’ asked Feng quietly behind him.

Lyle looked back, smiled an odd smile and said, ‘That is the wrong question, Feng Darin. The question should be: how will Sasso survive the day?’

And across London, the bells began to ring, declaring the hour, singing their brief songs to anyone who would listen, who would care that the city was alive, coming alive, had always been alive, buzzing with sound and noise day after day, the inhabitants making up a whole so huge, each part had to tick away in harmony with another part which ticked with another and another so that for just one part to bend and break would change the rhythm of the city, a thousand thousand lives living together by a single beat, the heartbeat of the city, the
living
city, and the bells rang out and proclaimed the hour, and Lyle turned and looked towards the east and saw, glimmering over the docks of Rotherhithe and the grasses of Greenwich and the ships of Westferry, the first, seductive trace of daylight, burning through the fog.

 

Dawn across London. The dim grey light crawls through the glass of the Great Exhibition, turning the blackness of the night to a tantalizing warm orange glow as the glass bends the light, its impurities shining as thin shadows across the floor, making a mystic map to another land in the play of light.

In the darkness, shut away from the dawn, sit Lord Lincoln and Mr Lingdao.

‘Will Sasso wait again until nightfall?’

‘Yes. And now Lyle knows. I suspect Sasso will want to know more of our Mister Lyle. I suspect Lyle will solve our problem, without our . . . mutual interest . . . being endangered.’

And in the darkness, Lord Lincoln smiles, and feels, just for a moment, confident, ready to face the world, the city, the stones. A tune drifts into his mind, into the empty space shaped by the city that made him, into the place where the heartbeat of his home keeps a steady time dictated by the winding alleys and rippling waters of the city, and he purses his lips, and hums quietly, ‘
“Oranges and lemons
. . .
”’
And stops, surprised, and tuts quietly to himself, shaking his head to free it of the tune, and returns to thinking about more important matters, while outside, the bells ring on.

 

And in another darkness, hiding from the sun, a door opens, and something is pushed into black gloom, thick and cold and stultifying. And a frightened voice, used to speaking English, but not as it is spoken in England, says, ‘Who’s there? What’s happening? ’

And Ignatius Caryway whispers, ‘I
made
you! I brought you here, it was a mission appointed by God, I am the vessel of Our Lord, I am the Way, I am the . . .’

‘And the Lord sayeth, “I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt have no . . .”’ Voice trembling, terror in every word, a salvation that isn’t forthcoming.

 

Fatigue had caught up with Thomas and Tess, springing on them as they passed through the streets of London. Somehow, though neither of them understood how, the day brought safety and, for the moment, everything was all right. Relief at the incredibility of still being alive had begun to mingle with the realization of what they had achieved, and each mind slipped in and out of the closed doors of sleep.

‘Are you sure it is wise to go back to your home?’ asked Feng Darin quietly as they each carried a child in their arms up to the doors of Lyle’s house.

‘Nowhere is safe,’ replied Lyle. ‘But daylight is as frightening to some people as the night is to us.’ He stared into Feng Darin’s dark brown eyes and his worn, openly foreign features, exposed now in the sunlight. ‘It shows some of us, who would rather not be reminded, what we really are, inside.’

Feng met Lyle’s eyes for a second, then followed him uncomplaining through the door.

 

Seven a.m. in London, and Thomas lies asleep and dreams of flying through the sky, of the world below being all his, of being freer than the ship on the sea or the rider on the horse, dreams of escaping it all, dreams of making a dream come true, and smiles in his sleep, and rolls over, to sleep and dream again.

Seven a.m. in London, and Lyle sits quietly by Tess’s bed as she rolls over in her sleep, shivering in half-real, half-dreamt winter’s cold, kicking unconsciously at her blanket. Lyle pulls it back over her feet and, for a reason he can’t quite explain, sings softly under his breath, with no particular tune or sense of time, ‘
Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry
. . .’

And Tess sleeps the peaceful dream of safety in daylight, and dreams that, somewhere, in the shadows, a vague shape sings a song to her, as no shape ever did when she was awake to hear.
‘Blacks and greys, dapples and bays, coach and six of little horses
. . .
’

And she smiles, and dreams of a dream come true, and rolls over, to sleep and dream again.

 

‘Tell me about the blade, Feng Darin.’

Feng reached into his coat and pulled out, wrapped neatly in black silk, a long, slim black object. He laid it with some reverence on the table and gently unwrapped it. It was plain, unadorned, and also, Lyle noticed with some surprise, very light to handle, smooth and slightly warm to the touch. It was definitely stone; no metal felt as the blade did, but it had been carved down to a point that was sharp to the touch, and had a deadly gleam at its curved end that looked as if it had tasted more than its share of blood.

‘This is Selene’s blade,’ said Feng. ‘Stolen from Sasso while he slept. He treasured it above all things. It is said that a man who drives it through his own heart and longs to die will not die. That it does not kill the man, merely the heart, and that where the heart was, there is an emptiness, waiting to be filled. Do you recognize its material?’

Lyle glanced up, then down at the blade again, running his fingers over it with a more intense expression. ‘Good grief,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t tell me it’s magnetic?’

‘This is hyresium, the stone that the Tseiqin once knew how to manipulate, when they were a great people and mankind was still learning how to light its own fires. The knowledge is now dead, but some of the artefacts they forged live on. The Fuyun Plate was one, until it was destroyed. This is another. It is suggested . . .’ His voice trailed away.

‘Suggested that?’

‘Supposition . . . suggests that Selene was once Tseiqin, once had the green eyes that could burn through a mind. But for some crime against her own people she was banished, lost her power, and took with her into exile only this blade. Lingdao
xiansheng
does not hold with the theory, but I myself have always had an affection for it.’

Lyle sighed and put the blade down gently, as if afraid of either touching it or breaking it. ‘Just what I needed for a logical and rational lifestyle. Another scientifically uncertain object of implausible power. I assume it’s the kind of thing we can’t let fall into the wrong hands?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Typical,’ muttered Lyle, slumping down in an armchair.

Feng sat down opposite Lyle, and said nothing. The grandfather clock ticked on. Lyle stared up at the ceiling, brooding.