A Study In Ashes Part 35

"Poppy?" Bucky looked up, his earlier manners pared down by grief.

She nodded to the maid, who left them. Poppy pushed the door as far closed as she could without technically being in a closed room with an unmarried man.

"What is it?" Bucky asked, looking suspicious and not in the mood for pranks.

"I need to tell you something," she began, unsure how to proceed. "I'm going to give you some bare facts and I swear these are absolutely true."

"Very well," Bucky said, frowning.

"Did you know the clock on the landing was made by Dr. Magnus?"

"Yes, Tobias told me that."

She was starting to grow nervous, certain he wouldn't believe her. Bucky had a good imagination, but what she had to tell him was hardly credible, unless you knew everything. "Do you also know that it prints cards in a cipher?"

"Y-e-e-e-s," he said, drawing out the word. "I've seen them many times. I used to all but live here during school holidays, if you remember."

"Mr. Holmes gave me the key to the cipher," she said, her words speeding up as she rushed to the end, "and I worked out the message of the card the clock printed when you were in the study with Father."

Bucky waited. When she didn't speak-her tongue was momentarily frozen-he made an impatient circle with his hand. "What did it say?"

She fussed a moment with the corner of Imogen's blanket, then laid everything out across the foot of the bed. "Here is the card, and Mr. Holmes's letter with the key, and his book, and the answer. Check my work if you must. I'm not making this up."

Bucky rose slowly, leaving his hat behind on the chair. The room was silent but for Imogen's soft breathing and the distant bellow of Lord Bancroft calling Poppy to the table. She ignored her father. This was more important.

Bucky's hand went to his mouth as he read, and then he picked up the paper with Poppy's answer. As she had antic.i.p.ated, he looked utterly poleaxed. "I don't understand."

"It's all there. I can do a dance for you, try and convince you what I think, but you'll a.s.sume I'm just playing a game. Then you'll either grow angry or indulgent, and neither one of those helps us at all. So, you need to decide what this means for yourself."

He walked closer to the head of the bed, his eyes on Imogen's face as he spoke to Poppy. "Do you mind very much if I take the cipher and the card away and work through the message? Just to be sure?"

"No," Poppy said. "I expected you would."

"Thank you." He shot her a glance, his eyes kind. "But tell me what you think this means. I promise not to judge what you say."

She fidgeted, not wanting to choose the wrong words. For all the times Bucky had come to see Imogen, she'd never talked to him this way. She knew she was on delicate ground. "How much do you know about the night of the air battle?"

He looked at Imogen's still face, and Poppy felt the full weight of his distress. His features barely s.h.i.+fted, but the set of his eyes and mouth were all at once a dozen years older. "I was at the theater with Evelina and Holmes."

"Did Tobias ever tell you what happened aboard the Helios?"

He nodded. "Yes, and he told me her last words. Your brother believes she meant Anna."

She couldn't tell from his voice what he thought of that. "Do you think he's right?"

"Before the battle, Imogen was having very bad nightmares." He looked down at his hands, as if not sure how much he should say.

"I remember," Poppy said, not sure what to think. "A lot of them were about the Whitechapel murders."

It took him a while to reply, as if he was choosing his words with care. "She thought there was something not quite normal going on. She thought she knew things about the cases she shouldn't have."

Intriguing. "Did you believe her?"

He sighed. "Who am I to say? Just because I don't understand magic doesn't mean it's not there. Dr. Magnus was a sorcerer, for pity's sake."

"Someone talented in that way paid a visit to look at Imogen," she ventured.

"Who?" Bucky asked a little sharply. "You know that could be dangerous. They might not be honest, or you might be caught. Then what would happen?"

"What this person said was that Imogen's soul was lost and couldn't get home. I think that's what happened when she fainted. Something pulled her soul away, and maybe it was Anna."

Poppy heard the emotion in her own voice and made herself sit back and take a long breath. Nothing good would happen if she got so agitated she slipped back into the role of the strange little sister.

Bucky rose to stand by Imogen, his hand resting on the edge of the pillow. "Dear G.o.d."

To her horror, Poppy was starting to cry. Oh, no, this is going to make me sound hysterical! But she was already too far in to quit now, and there was only one more thing she had left to say. She took a ragged breath and finished. "She's in trouble, Bucky. You fought a duel for her. You can do this." Then Poppy tensed, waiting for him to stomp from the room as he called her a disturbed little girl.

Instead, he furrowed his brow. "How would I even get to her?" His hands began to shake, and Poppy understood the conversation was finally penetrating his practiced calm. He was a man of logic-the type who could master dirigibles and weapons-but he was also a toy maker filled with imagination. He was starting to believe, and it was breaking him apart.

She swallowed hard, not sure if she was helping her sister or simply causing him pain. "I don't know. Maybe it's not my role to know. The message wasn't for me, anyway."

It read: Bucky help me Imogen.

MEMBERs.h.i.+P OF THE STEAM COUNCIL, OCTOBER 1889.

LISTED IN ORDER OF SIZE AND IMPORTANCE OF TERRITORY:.

MR. JASPER KEATING,.

KEATING UTILITIES, GOLD DISTRICT.

MR. ROBERT "KING COAL" BLOUNT,

OLD BLUE GAS AND RAIL, BLUE DISTRICT.

MRS. JANE SPICER, SPICER INDUSTRIES, GREEN DISTRICT.

MR. WILLIAM READING,.

READING AND BARTELSMAN, SCARLET DISTRICT.

MRS. VALERIE CUTTER,.

CUTTER AND LAMB COMPANY, VIOLET DISTRICT.

ALSO:.

SILENCE GASWORKS,.

BLACK KINGDOM, SIZE AND REPRESENTATION UNKNOWN.

London, October 8, 1889.

STEAM MAKERS' GUILD HALL.

2:40 p.m. Tuesday.

JASPER KEATING PAUSED JUST BEFORE THE SPOT WHERE THE Scarlet King had bled all over his office carpet. The body had been removed, the carpet changed, but still he could not help that hitch in his step. b.l.o.o.d.y fool got what he deserved. And yet ...

His foot hung in midair a moment, but he forced it to step down and thus resumed his course through the office. A little squeamishness was understandable; not even Keating could deny the gruesomeness of finding his reception room splattered with brains. But this superst.i.tious dread of crossing his own floor had to end. Being so off balance wasn't like him at all.

Frowning, he picked up his jacket from the back of his chair and pushed his arms into the sleeves. Everything hinged on which story he told the world about Scarlet's death. How much should he say about Roth's involvement? Was it worth his while to keep his maker's name out of the press? Should he take the credit himself? Or was blaming a man who was about to be dead anyway the cleanest solution? Timing is everything.

Timing and an eye for opportunity. Alice was about to be a young, pretty, rich widow with a t.i.tled son and another alliance to make. Keating could use that, and a dose of mourning would force her to remember who was in charge. He was more than a little annoyed with his daughter. She had become far too attached to Roth when Keating required her loyalty for himself, and this premature change of cast would put her in her place.

Of course, Alice didn't know about the poison yet. Roth had hoped to spare her, and Keating had agreed. He couldn't afford hysterics right now, although he would miss the touch of drama. d.a.m.nation.

As Keating finished b.u.t.toning his jacket, his gaze fell on a wooden box the size of a carpet slipper. It sat on the shelf behind his desk, right at elbow height. Irritation made him tug at his cuffs, straightening them with a decisive snap. There was only one thing worse than finding out your maker shot his poisoner all over your office carpet, and that was discovering that same maker was a turncoat. Both Roth and the Cooper girl had vanished.

With a leaden feeling in his belly, Keating reached toward the box, his fingers twitching. Nothing he saw beneath the lid would make him happy, so he stopped, rubbing his thumb against his fingertips. Don't bother. You already know the answer. But knowing wasn't the same as being certain, so he picked up the box and set it on his desk. It was heavy, the polished rosewood finish hiding the heavy mechanism within.

Evelina's bracelets were only one half of the containment device that imprisoned her. This was the rest. He unlatched the lid and raised it with a faint click. Beneath it was a series of round dials showing direction, distance, and time. Keating looked at the position of the needles and swore.

Roth had unlocked the bracelets to allow Evelina to leave the university grounds, but that didn't disable the tracking mechanism. Unfortunately, the device used her dormitory rooms as the central point from which her location was calculated. Setting the tracking mechanism was a c.u.mbersome business requiring the services of Her Majesty's Laboratories. Baskerville Hall, just over two hundred miles to the southwest, had been within its range, if only just. Keating hadn't seen the need to reset the whole mechanism for a trip scheduled to last only days. Now he wished he had, because all the indicators on the device were in the neutral position, unable to read a thing.

Bile soured Keating's mouth. Evelina was out of range of his device's reach. Tobias Roth had vanished. Her Majesty's Laboratories were destroyed and there were rumors that Madam Thala.s.sa and her followers had done it. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Evelina had played a role in the sabotage and then escaped-and that meant she had the key to the bracelets.

Keating polished a fingerprint off the convex face of one of the dials, his knuckles brus.h.i.+ng the green felt inside the lid. Then his temper overcame him and he slammed the lid shut with a bang. Roth was an idiot or a traitor, and Holmes had been no help at all. He'd claimed to be fully occupied chasing a giant, murderous hound over the moor.

This much he knew: Evelina's disappearance had happened overnight. Keating had sent out a search party of his best men, but they'd turned up nothing, and that was no surprise. He had gone to bed one night knowing just where she was, and by the time his streetkeeper had checked the device the next morning, she was beyond the limits of its reach. I was duped. And he would bet his last s.h.i.+lling Holmes was in on it. Holmes, Roth, and perhaps even those fools at the university.

Of course, the restraints had an automatic safeguard against just such events. This latest model didn't depend on the bracelets being within range, but upon the number of times the key was turned. The key would soon stop working-if it hadn't already-and she would die in agony. A just punishment, if the waste of a promising operative. So much for lenience. I should have burned her long ago.

Fuming, Keating left his suite of offices, slammed the door closed, locked it, and stalked down the corridor of the Steam Makers' Guild Hall. He glanced over his shoulder, missing Roth's presence, and then cursed himself for doing it. d.a.m.n Roth. Still, it had been good to have a future viscount on staff; it gave his entourage presence. And d.a.m.n Scarlet, he thought grimly. Reading had cost Keating a valuable a.s.set. Good makers didn't fall out of trees. Now, sadly, the only future left for Roth was to die quickly offstage and with the least fuss possible. And maybe he deserves it.

Anger throbbing in his gut, Keating reached the stairs and began to descend, wondering how much of all this to reveal in the meeting that would begin-he checked his watch-mere minutes from now.

He continued, turning left toward the meeting rooms. He saw the Blue King up ahead, with three of his ragged Blue Boys guiding the steam-powered chair he rode in. Although his territory comprised the poorest parts of the East End, where starvation was commonplace, he was enormously, grotesquely fat.

Behind the chair, carrying a portfolio under one arm, was Mr. Juniper, the Blue King's elegant man of business. The fellow paused, bowing slightly in Keating's direction. The gesture rankled, reminding Keating of one other unpleasant discovery he'd made in the last week-Juniper's true name was Moriarty, and he was a mathematics professor at the very same college where Evelina had been attending. Could he have played a role in her escape?

Keating slowed his pace, not wanting to confront King Coal's entourage right away. For the first time the Gold King could recall, he was actually nervous. There was an unusual amount that could go wrong today.