A Study In Ashes Part 55

She was taking part in a land battle, yet it was hard to say exactly what it was like. The airs.h.i.+p had given her a good view of everything, but here she was but one ant in a swarm. There was too much noise and smoke to pick out much detail. In fact, Evelina couldn't see farther ahead than the horse and rider in front, and often they were slowed to a walk until finally the group cut south to circle the worst of the crush.

Adding to the chaos was a furor about mechanical snakes escaping from Covent Garden. According to a rebel messenger, the fires breaking out all around the area were driving them into the open, but not before the creatures cut a swath through the Gold King's retreating forces. It took the large-wheeled war machines to crush the seemingly indestructible serpents, because even aether weapons had little effect. The only advantage they had was that rooks could find the snakes no matter where they hid.

At one point, the prince's party pa.s.sed close to the caterpillar, which had finally reached the edge of the gardens where the steamspinner had landed. With a thrill of excitement, Evelina thought she caught a glimpse of Tobias and possibly Alice over to her left, but they were too far away to hail.

The prince's party reached the Savoy Chapel at the north end of the bridge where dozens more of the Gold King's machines must have fallen under the control of the rebels. There was an eerie lurch in the battle as one by one they stopped cold, releasing a puff of steam, limbs and cannons drooping. That means Lord Bancroft and Bucky made it safely through to the prince's main army!

Evelina laughed at the sagging machines, but then one of the smaller units whirled like a dervish, flailing dangerously through its own troops before it finally toppled over. "Look out!" someone cried as its casing burst in a blast of steam, and a scream of pain split the air and made Evelina's horse flatten its ears. Her first instinct was to leap off the horse and help the wounded, but then the prince broke into a gallop. At long last the crowd gave way, and the pursuit was on.

In no time at all, the prince was in the lead, Nick and Evelina hard on his heels. A thrill built inside her, and she leaned forward over her horse's neck, the wind in her teeth as she grinned. The bridge had finally cleared, and the Blue King's sphere was rolling madly ahead, far faster than Evelina would have expected.

Her first response would have been to use magic, but her power was too exhausted after calling the devas to trust in its accuracy. In turn, she'd wondered why he didn't just turn and blast them to pieces, but now she saw a deep fissure had opened in the housing of the engine inside the machine. The recoil of another volley would probably crack it in two. No wonder the king was holding fire. As to why he had turned tail and run rather than surround himself with his Blue Boys-she could only guess that somehow he'd learned of Moriarty's deception.

Although-the thought occurred to Evelina with the sick, cold, squishy feel of being handed something nasty at the fish market-it did seem odd that someone as wily as the Blue King would allow himself to be dangled like bait.

KING COAL WAS NOT AS EASY TO CATCH AS THEY'D EXPECTED, even though most of the fighting was on the north side of the Thames and they were following the south bank. What they saw here was mostly the aftermath of explosives dropped from the few dirigibles not destroyed by that morning's air battle. There were piles of rubble and the blackened remains of fires, but no ground troops.

But there were grenades. Whenever they got close, the machine would launch an explosive, forcing them to fall back. Then the rolling war machine would drop out of sight despite its size, and they would waste time hunting to pick up the Blue King's erratic trail. The chase moved steadily east, and Evelina guessed their quarry meant to go to ground deep in his own territory near the docks.

The horses were growing winded as the sunset painted the sky. She saw lights along the northward curve of the river that said they'd pa.s.sed the Tower. This was King Coal's territory, and they were running out of time to catch him.

The prince reined in. The riders were blowing almost as hard as their mounts. "We've lost him again," he snarled, every word a curse. "If we go much further, we'll fall into the Surrey Ca.n.a.l. Where's he gone?"

One of the cavalrymen jumped down to check his horse's shoe. The others s.h.i.+fted uneasily, some dismounting and others surveying the twisting lanes around them. The neighborhood looked old but well kept. "Where are we?" Evelina asked.

"Rotherhithe," said one of the cavalry.

The prince swore. "When I went with Holmes to see the Blue King last year, his headquarters were across the river. Why did he come this way?"

"No armies in the way," Nick answered. "And it's no trouble getting back across. The tunnel under the river runs right from here to Wapping across the water. Almost to his front door."

"Of course!" Edmond grabbed his reins, urging his mount forward once more. "Then that's where he's gone. To the tunnel!"

Nick and Evelina were right behind him, but the sudden departure caught the others by surprise and they lagged a few seconds behind. So when the Blue King's magnetic aether cannon took its shot, it caught the soldiers full on.

It was too close and too sudden for Evelina to react. The roaring flash-barely a dozen yards away-scattered the horses. Evelina's mount reared and she fell, her scream cut off in a brutal whoosh as she fell hard. She rolled away from the churning hooves as the horse whirled and bolted, feeling the graze of an iron shoe nonetheless. She scrambled to her hands and knees, body screaming from the abuse.

Immediately, she looked for Nick. He was leaping down from his own horse, letting it gallop away, and drawing his weapon. The prince was picking himself up off the ground. A quick glance told her there was nothing left of their cavalry escort, or the shed that had stood to their left. A sound of horror ripped from her throat. Smoking embers and a bad smell turned the narrow street into a snippet of h.e.l.l. Evelina's gorge rose, and even her magic was flattened to stunned silence. She hadn't known the men personally, but they were more than random strangers.

Shock thawed to anger, but survival forced her to think. The shot had come from across the road and somewhere behind Nick's position. She was far more vulnerable where she was than in the shelter of the buildings across the way.

She risked das.h.i.+ng across the cobbles to join the others, never so grateful to feel the warmth of Nick's arms as she crouched against the brick. "What now?" she whispered.

"We find him," the prince said grimly. "He's in the street behind us."

They drew their weapons, Evelina carrying a Webley much like the one that Jasper Keating had given her once long ago. Slipping between buildings, they circled toward the machine from behind, Nick in the lead.

"What the h.e.l.l happened?" he muttered under his breath. Evelina and the prince crowded forward to peer around the corner.

The sphere seemed to be in pieces. Even in the darkness, Evelina could tell the engine had failed, steam pouring from cracks in the housing. The front of the sphere seemed to have fallen away, but as they edged closer it became clear that what they saw was a large open hatch. The machine was empty, its occupant gone.

The prince made a face. "Where's that tunnel?"

THE Pa.s.sAGE UNDER the Thames, designed by Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, had been the engineering marvel of the age when it had opened as a pedestrian subway forty-five years ago, but it had since become part of the East London Railway's underground lines. Two arched tunnels greeted them, one for trains going north, the other south. The northbound entrance was blocked by a fall of stone-no doubt the result of an air attack-so there was no choice but to take the other. Evelina might have been worried about the prospect of meeting a train, but there was little chance of anything coming from the north side of the river with the battle going on.

Evelina's first instinct on entering the tunnel was to flee the claustrophobic shadows. Gaslights flickered at distant intervals, giving just enough light to avoid utter blackness. Glad as she was for the meager illumination, it seemed a waste of power. "The trains don't need light, so why are there gas lines down here?"

Prince Edmond answered, "These tunnels aren't just for the trains. The citizens of the Black Kingdom use them as well."

They were speaking in hushed tones, as there was something in the air that demanded caution. Nick bent to examine the ground. There was just enough s.p.a.ce to walk comfortably beside the tracks, but Evelina wondered how easy pa.s.sage would really be for the Blue King in his steam-driven chair.

"These ashes are still warm and they're not from a train," Nick said. "Someone came through here not long ago."

"Are there wheel tracks?" Evelina looked down the tunnel. Arches rimmed it, giving the appearance of a gigantic segmented worm. Every so often side pa.s.sages appeared beneath stone archways, no doubt for use of the underground residents.

"Yes, and boot prints. He's not alone."

The prince patted the bulging pockets of his long coat. "I have restraints, weapons, and water. We'll catch up to them. That chair of his doesn't move all that fast."

Nick rose, dusting the ash from his fingers. "I look forward to it."

They set off, but it wasn't the straightforward journey Evelina expected. They hadn't gone that far before they found the tunnel blocked, not by a collapse, but by barricades made of rubble and rusted iron. As the lightest of the three of them, Evelina tried to climb the eighteen-foot pile of detritus to see what was beyond, but it was too unstable.

"We know King Coal didn't come this way," Nick said. "He must have gone into the side tunnels."

"That's Black territory," said Evelina. "Even if no one catches us in there, it would be too easy to get lost."

"Maybe not." The prince rummaged inside his pocket. "What about this device the Scarlet King's men were testing at Manufactory Three?"

Nick stiffened at the name of the place, but Evelina leaned forward for a closer look. It was an octagon of black metal just a little larger than a man's hand. The cover was hinged at the bottom and latched at the top, and the prince opened it carefully.

"It's easiest to view by looking at the mirror inside the cover," the prince explained, sounding much more like a true schoolmaster right then. "The map is drawn backward so that someone wearing the device as part of their gear can open the cover and read it from the mirror."

"What does it do?" asked Evelina.

"It's an elaborate kind of compa.s.s," said the prince. "You tell it your destination, and it points you there."

"I never figured out how to tell it where I wanted to go," said Nick.

"I did," said the prince. "I needed to do something to keep busy on the Athena, at least until people started shooting at us." He popped the back off the device and began fiddling with the gears.

Curious, Evelina had to hold her hands behind her back to keep from s.n.a.t.c.hing it away for a better look. When the prince finally surrendered it, she could see a series of red arrows pointing to a tiny spot on the painted map of London.

"There are two painted faces for the compa.s.s," said the prince. "One for London and one for England. I switched it to the London map. It's too small to see a lot of detail, but I told it we were aiming for Wapping across the river. The arrows will tell us which way to go."

Evelina saw a series of red arrows, all swiveled to point at a single location on the map. She turned to face another direction, and the arrows swayed to keep their points fixed firmly north. "Amazing." She desperately wanted to take it apart and examine the insides.

While they were setting the device, Nick had been checking the pa.s.sages, peering carefully at the ground. "This is the way Blue went."

Soon they were following after, carefully watching for signs of the underground inhabitants. She dreaded encountering more of the shadowy Others like the ones Magnus had kept at his castle. She had even less appet.i.te for encountering Wraiths-the Black Kingdom's equivalents of the Blue Boys or Yellowbacks. She'd seen them once before and had no desire for a repeat.

Barely speaking, they walked down the side tunnel for some minutes. It branched, and branched again, but they used the device to keep on in the right direction. She could feel Nick growing more and more restless. She didn't like the place, but she could tolerate the feel of the earth around her. By the way he kept glancing up with a frown, the weight of earth and water above them didn't agree at all with a magician of the air.

But something about the underground felt familiar to her. She remembered Magnus saying that he had studied in the Black Kingdom for a time, and she recognized a flavor that he had carried in his magic, almost the way a cook will pick up a spice during his travels. The source of that essence was somewhere deep in the earth and it was a magnet to her dark magic. She knew it for the root of power, the same pure essence that she had touched to call the devas of London to her hand. It was the commonality between the folkways of Gran Cooper and Magnus's sorcery. Somewhere in the Black Kingdom was the origin of everything she was. The touch of it pulsed inside her like a second heartbeat. It lulled her into a dreamlike state, pus.h.i.+ng out every other thought.

The prince shuffled to a stop. "I'm losing my sense of direction down here. Where are we?"

Shaking herself awake, Evelina opened the octagon and saw at once that the needles were pointing every which way. "d.a.m.nation!" Dismay rolled through her as she snapped the case shut. "If we turn around now, we can still retrace our steps."

A female voice came from the darkness ahead of them. "Equipment doesn't work well down here. There's too much ambient power for anything magnetized to work properly. Of course, we're the exception."

Evelina's breath caught as half a dozen of the half-human victims of Her Majesty's Laboratories emerged from the shadows ahead. They looked every bit as ragged as the band that had attacked the prince before. All had at least two metal limbs, and one had half a metal face. The leader pushed a few steps ahead of the others, the faint gaslight gleaming on the sculpted strands of metal that made up her forearm. "You do realize, of course, that you're trespa.s.sing? And once you're in the Black Kingdom, you don't leave until questioned."

There was a scuff behind her and Evelina wheeled around, heart hammering. There were another five of the creatures behind them, weapons raised. Even if she tried, she couldn't raise a spell in time to attack before they fired. They were trapped.

The prince lifted his hat, sketching a polite bow to the woman, whose body seemed to be as much metal as it was flesh. "Then, madam," he said as easily as if she had announced that tea was in the drawing room, "I expect we shall have the honor of accepting your invitation."

London, October 16, 1889.

OVER LONDON.

5:05 p.m. Wednesday.

TOBIAS CLAMBERED ABOARD THE SMALL, FLEET DIRIGIBLE that had brought his father and Bucky to the caterpillar. Alice and Poppy were just settling into their seats. Tobias sat beside Alice, grasping her cold hand in his good one. He'd barely been able to stop touching her since Yelland had hauled the two women onto the caterpillar. In that one heart-stopping moment he'd grasped how close he'd come to losing them in the madness sweeping the city.

"What the blazes were you doing in the middle of the fight?" Lord Bancroft exploded, his gaze riveted on Poppy.

"We were looking for Jeremy," she said stoutly. "Circ.u.mstances changed along the way. There were snakes."

The door slammed shut and the craft lifted. It had set down in the relatively safe zone near the Athena, but there was no wisdom in lingering.

"When I get you home ..." Bancroft growled.

"You can't keep me from helping." Poppy gave her father a mutinous look. "I'm getting the knack for defying danger."

Alice flinched. It might have been a stifled laugh, or it might have been chagrin. Tobias had heard most of their tale from Alice, who looked utterly exhausted. He didn't feel much better, but fondness for his sister made him smile. "It doesn't matter. We're getting them out of the battle."

His father muttered something under his breath, but the sound of the propellers drowned out his words. Bucky looked back from the pilot's seat. "That's the thing. We weren't expecting to find the ladies."

"What do you mean?" Tobias asked.

Lord Bancroft answered. "We commandeered the aircraft. The Gold King's forces have split and Keating's gone north. We came to give the news to the prince but he's gone after Blue."

"Have you found my father?" Alice asked, her voice tight.

"We think we know where he's gone," Bancroft replied. "And I would very much like to confirm our information."

Tobias could hear the eagerness in his father's voice. Gift wrapping Jasper Keating for the new heir to the throne was one of those rare moves that would make a duke out of a viscount.

"He's put my baby in danger," Alice said, the pain in her words wrenching Tobias's guts. "Please don't hold back because of me."

The dirigible turned, and Tobias caught a glimpse of the wreckage below. His breath nearly stopped. Fire and smoke billowed up from Covent Garden. Blue-white flame bloomed from an aether cannon, ripping through a line of the Gold King's machines. The resulting explosion blew a hole in the Royal Opera House. Then several city blocks northwest of there were flattened, mere crumbs of stone left behind. Two of the rolling spheres from the Blue King's army sat abandoned in the midst of the scene, giving testament as to what had levelled the landscape.

He didn't quite believe what he saw. These were the streets he'd haunted all his life-the places he'd drank and loved and played. Gone. Destroyed. Lost. It was as if all those memories had been ripped from him and trampled. A wave of hatred turned him cold.

Bands of men ran through the ruined streets-mostly rebels and Yellowbacks-sometimes fighting, but more often trying to catch up with the rest of their forces. Bodies and pieces of machinery remained behind, like silt from a receding flood.

"I don't see many Blues here," Tobias said. He could hear Poppy crying softly as she looked out the opposite window, and he thought he might lose his mind. He couldn't stand the thought of her distress.

"There was a split in their ranks," his father replied. "Their command fell apart after the Blue King ran. After that it was easy to push them back east."

"Rumor says there was a turncoat among them," Bucky added. "Blue's own man of business corrupted the troops."

Tobias didn't answer, distracted again by the spectacle out the porthole. It was going to take years, if not decades, to repair the damage from this single day. The dirigible pa.s.sed over a thick ma.s.s of fighting, rebels pus.h.i.+ng Yellowbacks north. "Isn't Keating down there in the midst of all that?"

"No," said Alice. "He would stay one step ahead."

"There's what's left of Russell Square," said Tobias. "We're near the Violet Queen's house."

"That's where our informant says Keating's gone. It makes sense. He publicly allied himself with her," Bancroft said, "and she's just the right distance out of the fray."

They touched down on the rooftop of the Grand Caliphate Hotel, a comfortable stroll from the British Museum. The hotel had evidently been abandoned as the battle moved north, but its large, flat roof-one of the first redesigned for the convenience of guests arriving by air-was still accessible. Bucky stayed behind in charge of Poppy and the s.h.i.+p. The others availed themselves of the steam-powered lift to the streets.

Yellowbacks, with their long black coats and outlandish weapons, patrolled the surrounding area looking for anyone remotely resembling a rebel.

Tobias wished Alice would have remained with Poppy, but she had the best chance of talking sense into Keating if they got him in irons. So he offered her his arm and they strode quickly toward the Violet Queen's extravagant home, with Bancroft on Alice's other side. All three of them looked dirty and rumpled, but for once no one was likely to report it in the gossip pages.

They'd nearly reached the corner of the lawn when he saw a scatter of Steamers parked along the road-a fair collection even for a wealthy neighborhood. Then with some surprise he spotted Michael Edgerton slouching against one of the lamp standards, smoking a cigarette as coolly as if there was no war tearing apart the city.

Tobias's stomach tightened as his old friend turned around, offering a smile. "I wouldn't go any closer," Edgerton said pleasantly. If anyone overheard without quite paying attention, it would have sounded like a cheerful greeting. "My men are already in place. Keating is in there."

Bancroft sucked in air, and Tobias knew what it meant. They'd had Keating's location correct, but others had arrived there first. As he looked around, he saw the dark-clad figures, all but hidden in the shadows.

"By the by," Edgerton said amiably, "good work out there today, Roth. I knew you had it in you."

"But ..." Alice began, but Tobias put a hand over hers. He could feel distress radiating from her like body heat, but he knew Edgerton. They could count on his help.

"Keating has our boy," he said. "We need him to tell us where he's being held."

"We intend to take him alive," Edgerton said confidently. "These men won't make mistakes."

He'd no sooner said it than the crack of gunfire sounded from the house, then an explosion. The front corner of the house blew outward, a cloud of smoke and dust billowing out with volcanic force. Tobias pushed Alice behind him, his one thought to get her behind cover. The rebels charged the front lawn. Guns leaped from beneath tailcoats. Then the Yellowbacks opened fire.