A Conspiracy of Alchemists: Book One in the Chronicles of Light and Shadow (23 page)

CHAPTER 38

The train had stopped moving. Elle sat up in her bunk. “Marsh?” she whispered in the dark. There was only silence. She slipped out of her bunk and drew the divider aside. A shaft of metallic light from outside fell across his empty bunk. She peered out the window. They were in the middle of nowhere. Only the darker looming shapes of mountains interrupted the cloud-streaked night sky. The moon fought to make itself seen through the trees.

Something was wrong. She felt the wrongness scrabble inside her with its tiny claws, like a trapped bird.

There was a soft noise outside the compartment. Without a sound, Elle lifted the lid of her trunk and picked the Colt out of its holster. She slipped the safety catch off with a quiet click. With the revolver resting in her hand, she went to the door and opened it slightly.

“Hugh?” she whispered.

Two dark figures crashed into the compartment. One grabbed her and pinned her to the wall. Elle felt her nightdress rip as one intruder stepped on the hem.

She twisted round and kicked one of them in the knee, but she was barefoot and he was so much stronger than her.

“Let go of me, you bastards!” she said between gritted teeth. She felt a sudden surge of energy pulse though her and it crackled over her skin like static.

“Ooh, they said the little kitty would put up a fight.” One of the men grabbed her by the hair. And shook his hand as if touching her had stung him. “Now, be a good girl and come with Uncle Chunk. There are people who have business with you.”

“I am not your kitty and I am going nowhere,” Elle said. She wrestled her arms up from beside her and pulled the trigger. The discharge of the round in such close quarters was deafening.

One of her attackers loosened his hold on her and dropped to the ground like a sack of spuds, but the other held firm. She tried to aim at him, but he grabbed her wrist and twisted it back painfully. The Colt dropped to the ground and skittered away.

“Now hold still. I’ve orders not to hurt you too much,” he said as he shoved a piece of cloth over her face. An acrid smell filled her nose and mouth. Chloroform
,
she thought in a panic. She couldn’t breathe. The cloth was suffocating her. She wrestled her face away and took a breath so she could scream, but the world started swimming around her. “Let go of me,” she gasped, and tried to scratch at the strong hands holding her, but the world tilted … and everything disappeared into darkness.

Marsh walked down the corridor of the train. He had gone to investigate the reason for the train stopping. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his bones.

“Problems on the track, sir,” a sleepy concierge had told him. “We have sent two engineers to clear it away. It’s probably just a fallen tree. Nothing unusual for these parts. It would be better if you went back to bed. We will have this sorted out in a few minutes and we’ll be on our way before you know it.”

Marsh looked about in frustration. There were no other enquiries that he could make. With a growing sense of unease, he turned back to the compartment.

He looked at his pocket watch. It was four o’clock in the morning. Hopefully this stop wouldn’t detain them for too long a time. He cursed himself for not choosing to travel by airship. But the next flight to Constantinople from Venice departed in two days’ time. It would have taken them longer to get there. And the thought of being stuck on an airship after the incident with the pirates made him quiver. The train was more anonymous. And he had been hoping to see Rosamund. That had been a disaster. The woman never failed to disappoint. And then he had allowed himself to kiss Elle He had tried to resist, but she was so beautiful standing before him in her nightdress. She made his insides melt when she looked at him like that. No woman had ever made him feel that way.

They would have to speak about it in the morning. He needed time. Time to woo her, to do things properly. She deserved that. He ran his hand through his hair to clear his thought.

The thwack of gunpowder igniting on steel reverberated through the train. Every nerve in Marsh’s body stood on end as his finely tuned senses felt the vibrations in the ether. That was the sound of gunfire. He started running.

He skidded to a halt outside the door of their compartment. The door was open.

“Elle?” he called. There was only silence. He was sure he had closed the door on his way out.

The tinny smell of gunpowder filled is nostrils. He summoned up a ball of light from the lamp in the corridor and flung it into the darkness ahead of him. It was a handy trick he had learned in the military, but one he had not needed to use in years. The compartment was empty but there was a metallic tang in the close space that made his blood run cold.

Elle’s sheets and bedclothes hung off the bunk. He ran his hand over them. The linen was still warm from her body and the faint smell of freesias drifted from them. He felt his chest constrict.
Please no,
he thought. The rug before the bed felt wet and sticky. He examined his fingers in the dwindling light with a growing sense of unease. His suspicions were correct. His fingers were covered in blood.

He peered out of the carriage window into the darkness. Nothing but silence and ominous forest spread out before him. He rushed to the other side of the carriage and flung the door open. The moon struggled its way out from between the clouds and trees. A horse snorted and shook its head. A carriage harness jingled. He heard the sharp crack of a whip and the dark shape of a carriage rumbled into motion.

Without meaning to, he shouted. They were getting away.

Marsh launched himself at the carriage. He managed to grab the back railing. The carriage was covered in something dark and sticky that smelled like tar. With all of his strength, he dragged himself up onto the roof of the carriage.

The coachman turned round and aimed a yellow blast of alchemy at Marsh. He blocked the deathblow but the eddy of energy hit him in the ribs and knocked him sideways, off the carriage. He landed with a thump on the gravel next to the tracks. Stunned, he could only watch as the carriage sped away into the dark.

He lay alone in the dark for long seconds, unable to move. Slowly, the feeling ebbed back into his body. He could feel the large chunks of gravel that lined the tracks dig into his back. He struggled to sit up, but his limbs would not respond

Up ahead, the train whistled. The locomotive let out a great huff of stream and the carriages creaked. The train started moving. He was going to be left behind.

With all of his strength Marsh tried to push himself up off the ground, but his arms gave way. He slumped back down as the last of his strength slipped from his body.

Above him, a dark shadow moved. Quiet as a whisper, it landed beside him. Marsh felt soft lace sleeves on his face as cool hands traveled over him.

The train was moving faster now. Not long before it would be gone.

Arms that were inhumanly strong dragged him upwards. He groaned as his knees hit hard metal steps. A pale face with dark eyes looked down at him.

“Loisa,” he whispered.

“Stay still, you’re bleeding,” she said. His head rolled to the side, and with odd detachment, he watched the ground move below him.

“Sir, are you all right?” The voice sounded far away. He looked up. The conductor’s face swam in and out of his field of vision. Hands lifted him and a searing pain ripped through his side. He looked at his hands. They were red. There was blood on the railing and on the floor around him. Not his blood, was it? The faces of a few startled passengers peered out from their compartments. People were asking questions about what had happened. Their faces floated about in front of him, the words sounded like noises under water. They disappeared before he could answer.

Somewhere in the distance, a woman screamed belatedly. Was she screaming because of him? He closed his eyes for a moment …

“Hugh … Hugh, can you hear me?”

He opened his eyes. “Loisa,” he tried to say, but his lips wouldn’t move enough to let the words out.

“Hugh. Wake up.” He felt someone patting his cheek. It was really irritating. He moaned in protest.

“Damn you, Warlock. Wake up. I’m not letting you die on this train.”

Marsh felt himself teeter on the edge of the encroaching darkness. There seemed no point in fighting it any more. He had failed everyone. What point was there in living in a world without her? Elle was gone and there was nothing he could do about it, was the last thing he thought as the oily darkness slipped over him, slick and black.

Slowly, Elle drifted into consciousness. It was dark and she could smell a familiar musty scent of leather and sweat. Her eyes felt heavy, crusted with sleep, and her tongue felt too big for her mouth. It was hard to move.

She sucked in a lungful of the metallic air and a wave of nausea swept through her. Fighting against the encroaching darkness, she opened her eyes again. The world tilted into focus. Her wrists ached when she moved and her calves were cramping. Someone whistled outside. A spark reactor hummed.

She forced herself to focus. Seats … wood paneling … the curve of a hull … silence outside … the absence of the smell of horses.

She was on an airship.

Slowly, painfully, she tried to drag herself upright. She needed to find a porthole to see where they were, but every joint and muscle screamed in agony as she moved. Another wave of nausea swept over her. She fought it, but once more everything went dark again.

CHAPTER 39

Marsh sat in the dining cart, his coffee and breakfast untouched on the table in front of him. Hunched over and brooding, he watched the station and the platform slide into view.

Bucharest. And Elle was gone.

He took a determined sip of his cooled coffee. It was bitter and set his teeth on edge.

He shifted to find a more comfortable position, but his tightly bandaged rib cage made him think better of it. The blast of alchemy and the fall last night had caused more damage than he cared to admit. He felt empty and hollow, like something had been ripped from his insides. He was almost sure he knew what that missing thing was. The power that rested within him was almost all gone. The glowing node that made him a Warlock had diminished to a few glowing grains, deep inside him. And for the first time in his life, he was properly afraid.

A slight commotion on the platform caught his attention. A group of liveried attendants were dragging a clutch of black-lacquered sarcophagi from the train onto a trolley. He recognized the gilded red family crest of the a dragon on one of the smaller coffins. It was Loisa Belododia’s traveling coffin. She was on her way to her family’s winter palace in the Carpathians. It was an ideal place for her kind this time of year because the days were short and overcast. Nightwalkers thrived in the cold.

Loisa had saved him last night. In the compartment, when no one was about, she had dripped a few drops of her ancient blood onto his wounds. It was not enough to heal him, but she dared not give him more. The mixing of Warlock and Nightwalker magic was too dangerous. The blending had been known to turn the recipient into a grotesque and raging monster. The drops of black blood, thick like molasses, knitted the broken bones and sealed up his ruptured organs. He survived.

Loisa had sat with him for a long time, with her cool fingers resting on his arm. Shortly before sunrise she had leaned over and kissed his brow. She had whispered a prayer in the old language that he would be well, before the first rays of sunlight had sent her rushing back to her compartment in a cloud of black lace that trailed behind her.

He watched the trolley of coffins move off the platform. Loisa could be no further help until sunset. But by then, she would be safely ensconced at the winter palace for the season.

What did Loisa say to Elle last night? Loisa was one of the old ones and, as was the case with most creatures blessed with immortality, she thrived on gossip and discord. Not that it really mattered now. There was no way of knowing what Abercrombie would do with Elle. The mere thought of it made him queasy. He stared darkly into his cup. He had made a complete mess of things. He was a failure.

He sighed at the stillness of the carriages. The train had better hurry up. He needed to get to Constantinople without delay.

The conductor walked past with his pocket watch in his hand. Marsh signaled the man over to his table. “Excuse me, when are we departing?”

The conductor looked at him apologetically. “We will have a three three-hour wait here, my lord. They need to stock and realign the carriages.” He cleared his throat. “Also, there is the matter of reporting what happened last night to the police.”

Marsh felt the distance between him and Elle grow. Three hours. A lot could happen in three hours.

“I have already given my statement,” he said. “I don’t have anything to add. The disappearance of Miss Chance is a matter for the British High Commission and I have already sent a man with a dispatch. There is nothing more to be done until I get to Constantinople.”

“Yes, of course, my lord.” The conductor cleared his throat. “Perhaps it might assist in passing the time to take in some of the sights of the city. Bucharest is very beautiful. Some fresh air perhaps?”

Marsh resisted the urge to shake the man. Instead he simply nodded. “Yes, I think you might be right.” He rose and picked up his hat and gloves. With a determined tug, he pulled his new black carriage coat over his shoulders and stepped off the train.

He walked slowly. The pain in his side felt unwholesome and corrupt and it worried him. He needed help.

On the street, he stopped to focus. Bucharest, he thought cynically. Another city that was doing its best to be Paris. Filigree spark lamps lined wide boulevards. Everywhere buildings were going up in the New-Baroque Parisian style. He hunched himself up inside his coat against the cold wind that tugged at his clothes. The new Bucharest would be of no assistance to him. What he needed would be in the back streets.

He turned off the boulevard and walked down one of the cobbled lanes. The face of the city changed instantly. Hollow-eyed children stared at him from the porches of adobe houses made in the old Wallachian style. Here and there a brightly painted onion dome poked out from between the rooftops. Horses with red woolen tassels on their harnesses ambled by, their haunches steaming in the morning cold as they pulled wooden carts loaded with everyday things. Wisps of smoke from cooking fires stole around corners.

It took him about half an hour to find the first marker. They were not that hard to find if you knew what you were looking for, but in this strange place, even he struggled. This marking was on a drain cover. The Warlock triangle with the eye in its apex was cleverly worked into the grooves of the metal. He stood on the cover and closed his eyes. The tiny flecks of power left inside him flickered faintly, and he shook his head in frustration. It was not enough to find the next pointer.

He shivered and closed his eyes, concentrating energy inside him. This time, he felt another flicker, showing him the direction.

Two streets down, he found the small shop. The faded Warlock symbol of the triangle was on the sign jutting out above the door, inside a winding pattern of leaves. Warlocks had not always been allowed to conduct their business in the open. Many of his kind had met their death quite brutally in centuries past. Here in the more remote countries, where superstition ran deep, creatures of Shadow were still treated with suspicion and so the evidence of the otherworldliness was often disguised.

He peered in through the dirty glass panes of the shop. Dusty bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling and the shop was lined with cabinets containing many little drawers. He had found what he was looking for. He was outside the doors of a Warlock apothecary. Every city had one, although many had taken to the road in recent years, selling their jars and potions from horse-drawn wagons. Snake oil was apparently a big seller for many of his commercially minded brethren. A grubby sign in Cyrillic script in the glass pane of the door hinted that the shop was open.

Had his noble order come to this? The emptiness inside him ached. Without power to fuel the Craft, he knew the answer to his question.

He pushed the door and stepped inside. The astringent smell of tinctures and herbs hit him as the door closed behind him. A man with a long beard looked up from behind the counter and nodded. Marsh wanted to laugh. His Warlock brother looked like something out of a children’s book. He wore a gray smock that matched his beard. On his head was a pointed cap that flopped over to the side.

The man said something in Wallachian that Marsh could not follow. When he did not respond, the man shrugged. “Yes, how may we help?” he tried again in French.

Marsh walked up to the counter. “Good morning, Brother. I wonder if you could … ” He used the old language and made the sacred sign.

The man’s eyes widened.

“My lord. Forgive me, but we were not expecting anyone from the Council to visit.” He bowed.

Marsh shook his head. “I am not here on official business. I am just a travelling Warlock in a strange city seeking out a friendly face.”

The man’s beard separated into a smile, but his eyes remained wary. “Then welcome, Brother. My name is Vasili.” He took off his cap and gray smock. He was wearing a respectably clean waistcoat underneath.

“It’s been years since I’ve seen any of us in traditional medieval dress.”

“Oh, I wear that for the street customers and for tourists. The novelty gives my wares some authenticity,.” Vasili said as he stowed the bundle under the counter and gestured to the back. “Come, will you take some tea?”

Marsh nodded. “Thank you, that would be most agreeable. And perhaps we could talk. You see, I might be in need of a favor.”

“Hmm.” Vasili sniffed and looked at him with some concern. “Forgive me, I am not trying to be rude, but is that Alchemist and perhaps Nightwalker I smell?”

Marsh nodded. The man was more competent than he had hoped. “It is a very long story, but you are quite correct, Brother. I’ve run into a few rather unfriendly people of late. Except the Nightwalker. She is a friend.”

Vasili nodded and his beard jiggled. “Well, then I suppose you are fortunate to have found the right place. Let me close the shop and we can talk.” He walked to the front door and locked it. He turned the sign over to show closed.

“This way.” He led Marsh to the back. In the narrow hallway, he called out something in Wallachian. A small woman in an apron appeared from the back. She assessed Marsh with her sharp black eyes and then disappeared.

“My fifth wife.” Vasili winked at Marsh. “She cooks nothing but cabbage. Come, let us go to my study.” He led Marsh to a room off the corridor. Away from the herbs in the shop, the house did indeed bear the distinct smell of slow-cooking cabbage.

Vasili’s study was a revelation. Every conceivable space was filled with glass jars and other bits of apparatus. Plants in terra-cotta pots spilled out from everywhere.

“I specialize in herbology,” he said in answer to Marsh’s curious glances. “I have been trying for years to extract the minute particles of magic held in plants into making cures. Some I have been successful with, others not so much.”

He moved a glass jar with a withered-looking plant inside onto another counter and gestured for Marsh to sit. Mrs. Vasili bustled in with a tray, which she set down without a word. She gave Marsh another sharp look before shuffling out again.

Vasili poured them each a cup of the strong black tea from the a metal pot. He dropped a sugar lump into the bottom of each before handing one to Marsh.

“So, how has the Craft been in these parts?” Marsh asked as he took a sip of the tea. It was strong and sweet, made in the way that most of the Eastern peoples preferred. It was drunk from the saucer after it had cooled rather than the cup, a practice he had never quite managed to become comfortable with.

Vasili rolled his eyes. “Ah, don’t talk to me about the Craft. We’ve not seen any proper power flow of the Shadow realm in these parts for years. Not since I was a boy. But we make do with what we have. A dash of inferior spark here, a sliver of essence distilled from plants there.” He paused to slurp his tea from his saucer. “Mostly we do only enough to reassure the people. As the Council decrees.”

Marsh nodded and raised his cup. “As the Council decrees.”

“So what brings you to my doorstep, Brother, if I might be so bold to ask?”

“I’ve had a few … shall we say … unfortunate accidents in the last few days.”

Vasili merely stroked his beard. “My eyes and ears are closed. Many come to me because they don’t want the world to know about whatever proclivities they might have and I speak of it to no one.”

Marsh cleared his throat at the thought. “Quite.” He took another sip of tea. “Last night, I literally had the Warlock knocked clean out of me. I was hoping you might have something restorative. To keep me going until I am healed and my own levels can be replenished. I barely managed to find the markers to your place.”

Vasili looked at Marsh in alarm. “But the markers are in plain sight.”

“I know.”

“Well, I suppose I could have a look, but I have so little power myself. I may not be able to do much.” He regarded Marsh. “What we need is another Oracle. That’s what we need. Someone to open the pathways for us again. These are dark days for our kind, my lord. Dark days indeed. Pretty soon there will be nothing left of our Craft and we will become ordinary mortals, like everyone else. Who knows how the Shadow will react to the shift in balance.”

Marsh nodded. “Who knows?”

“Would you mind if I had a look?” Vasili asked. He gestured at Marsh.

“Ah, yes. It’s this pain here, in my ribs.” Carefully, he unbuttoned his waistcoat and opened his shirt. Vasili gasped in surprise as the bandage came away in his hand. “Oh my.” He leaned in to have a closer look.

Marsh looked down at his side. An angry raised scab ran across his rib cage. Dark blue, purple and yellow bruises spread across his side in a mottled blotch. In a few places where the Nightwalker blood had touched him, the dark blue skin was raised and blistering.

“Oh my,” Vasili said again. “Look at the reaction. I haven’t seen an injury like this since the wars.” Marsh winced as the apothecary touched the tender skin. “Too many different types of power in one place. You will be lucky if this ever heals, I’m afraid. What kind of alchemy was it? And be sure to tell me the truth. Your recovery depends on it, you know.”

Marsh nodded. “It was yellow with a strong sense of sulfur. It packed quite a blast. Nothing like it was in Napoleon’s wars, but the composition felt sophisticated and it was strong.”

“Good heavens, they could have killed you!” Vasili exclaimed. “I thought we had a non-aggression pact with the Alchemists.”

“We do. This is different, though. They took something—someone—important away from me.”

“Lift up for me, please.”

Marsh gasped as he raised his arms. “I’m sure it looks worse than it is.” He winced as Vasili poked a particularly painful bit of skin with his finger.

“Hold still, I might have something that will help.” Vasili bustled off down the narrow passageway that led to the shop and came back with a tub of grayish-looking ointment. He opened it and dug his fingers into the pot. “This will tingle.” He slopped the ointment onto the wound.

The astringent smell of herbs filled the air. “What is that?” Marsh asked. His rib cage felt like it was on fire.

“Witch hazel and hemlock. And a few other ingredients you might not know. It’s made with my own method. You see, I think I have found a way to extract the Shadow forces from these plants. They are their own healing spell.”