A Study in Ashes (23 page)

Athena
. A pang of loss hit him so hard he thought his chest might cave in. He’d kept her safe, but where he’d buried her was a mystery now. He would have to find out where the ship had gone down and retrace his journey—though now he knew better than to travel the roads alone.

And where was he now? He guessed north of London, but not so far as Sheffield. They were in the Scarlet King’s territory,
and his lands tended toward the northwest. And there were train tracks just over there. There would be a train, and a journey south, and then life again. He would find his crew and get Athena back, and then he would find a ship.

And Evelina
. In a wave of dangerous vertigo, the memory of the nights he’d spent with her hit him like a broadside of twenty-pound shot. Nick’s eyes snapped open. In a few seconds, his imagination had carried him into a future he had no idea how to reach. But the details didn’t matter. Fate had given him a chance, and he wasn’t going to waste it—because once he had his deva and his ship and his woman, he was going to have his revenge.

He savored that thought a moment, letting it melt on his tongue like a sweet. He wasn’t a political man, but the Scarlet King had thrown down the gauntlet when he’d clapped Nick in chains. No one did that to the Indomitable Niccolo and lived to tell the tale.

But first things first. What was so important that men were being sacrificed to get it off this roof? He inched along, drawing parallel to the point where the airman had slid to a stop behind the tower. The man was half hidden in a tangle of propeller and harness, arms and legs sprawled like a carelessly tossed doll.

With one end of the rope wound around his waist, Nick worked his way down the roof, keeping the line tight. He took his time, not letting his sense of newfound freedom make him reckless. When he reached the twisted wreck of the personal flight device, he realized it had been a kind of winged propeller, held on by a shoulder harness and powered by a small engine that strapped about the waist. Nick was no maker, but experience told him winds would have been a problem. A strong gust had probably pushed the airman into the spires, fouling him between roof and tower.
Dark Mother of Basilisks
. The force of the whirling blades had cut the airman nearly in two.

Nick turned away a moment, appalled. Then he pulled out the pocket knife and began sawing through the straps of the harness. The leather gave way easily, and soon Nick was able to push the propeller assembly aside. It slithered off the
roof, barely catching on the gutters before falling to the ground. A lone, ragged cheer wafted up. Someone was pleased that Nick was making progress.

Now that he could get close to the body, Nick began searching for whatever devices he could find. He hadn’t been given much detail to work with and he wished Striker, his second in command, was there to help. The man knew machines.
Gods, what I’d give for one of his aether guns about now
.

Nick ran his hand over the airman’s bloody uniform, feeling the cold stickiness of gore. As he began to turn the body, bone and entrails showed through where the propeller had struck. The only thing that had kept the body in one piece was the engine strapped to the small of his back. It had been destroyed, but the steel casing had stopped the whirling blade. As Nick lifted the man’s shoulder, he thought he saw what the men surrounding the church wanted back. There was an octagon of black metal at the front of the man’s harness. Nick could just grasp it from edge to edge with one hand if he stretched his fingers wide. Brass rings secured it to the harness, and he quickly sliced through the straps holding it in place. Nick let the body sag back to the roof and examined the box. The cover was hinged at the bottom and latched at the top, and he quickly opened it. The inside of the cover was a mirror, and the face of the device was a map. Nick frowned at it, unsure at first what he was looking at. Then he flipped it around and viewed it as the airman would have seen it, reflected in the mirror as he opened the case midflight. It was a map of England with a compass in one corner. Useful enough, but what made it unique was a series of red arrows, all swiveled to point at a single location on the map. The river he could see was the Severn. London was but a few hours away by rail. Somehow this device knew exactly where he was.

Nick stared for a long moment. The map was painted on glass, and in the strong sunlight he could see the gears turning behind it, moving as he changed the angle of his body. Some of the workings at least had to be magnetic, but the nuances escaped him. Nevertheless, he could see why the
device was important. It made independent flight a thousand times safer. As long as a soldier could read a basic map, he could find his destination.

Nick stuffed the device inside his coat. He knew he was raising the stakes by taking it, but he couldn’t simply hand it back to the enemy. Then he sat on his haunches a moment, staring at the face of the young airman. He was painfully young, with the farm-fresh good looks that only came from a lifetime of early rising and milk warm from the cow. No doubt there would be a family wanting to bury him. It was the only thing they could do now for their young man. The thought of it made Nick cold inside.

He cut away the heavy motor and threw it to the ground as well. It landed with a crash in the middle of Keeler’s bloodstain. At least his fellow prisoner’s body had been hauled away. Then Nick ran the rope through what was left of the harness and rolled the body off the edge, bracing his own back against the tower and letting the rope out bit by bit. The airman’s body drifted to the ground quickly, but not so fast that it suffered further damage. Then, when the men on the ground swarmed the dead, Nick scrambled to the roof ridge, all but forgotten—at least until the guards discovered the device was missing.

The two roof exits were guarded, and so was the perimeter of the grounds, but Nick had ideas. The main steeple housed the church bells; intricately cut openings all around the spire let out the call of the hours that Nick could hear all the way to the furnaces of Manufactory Three. The only problem was that the opening was nearly seven feet above the roofline.

He looked around for the zephyr making its lazy loop around the top of the church. It was approaching the north end of its patrol, and Nick had about thirty seconds to grab the bottom of the opening and haul himself inside before the lookout would spot him. He wasn’t sure the men on the ground could see where he stood, but they were attending to their fallen comrade.

Nick grabbed the stone edge of the opening and heaved himself up. The one good thing about the brutish work he’d
been doing was that he was strong through the arms and shoulders. In mere moments he had hauled himself inside. Below his feet were rows of bells attached to vast iron wheels, each one of the huge things ready to swing in a circle the moment the peal was rung. The sound alone would be enough to crack an intruder’s skull. His stomach in his throat, Nick dropped to the narrow walkway and edged between them. On the far side, there was a ladder down to the platform where the bell ringers normally stood. He paused a moment, listening, the cool air inside the tower whispering against the metal of the bells.

Outside, songbirds were rejoicing. A fat bee zigzagged in one window and out another, oblivious to Nick’s problems. It calmed his nerves. Song, flight, air, the freedom of rooftops—he was in his element. Nick took a breath, summoning his power. Then he began to walk, swift and silent. Where he stepped, no tracks appeared in the fine layer of dust.

Down the ladder, and then to another staircase. It corkscrewed down in pie-shaped slices of stone, the tower black but for a few tiny windows. Nick stayed close to the wall, going carefully until light from the floor below crept up to meet him. But there were voices along with that light. He stopped to listen.

“What do you mean, gone?” It was Rose’s voice, muffled by a closed door. He must have come inside to wait in comfort rather than stand out in the cool wind like everyone else.

“The prisoner took the compass, sir. I told you he was a thief.” That was Nick’s least favorite guard.

“Damn his eyes.” A door just around the curve of the stairs opened. Nick could hear the creak of hinges and saw the splash of brighter sunlight across the stone floor. “Did you send for reinforcements?”

“More airmen are already here. They’ve been guarding the site since the crash.”

“Good. Tell them to shoot to kill.”

Nick swallowed. He’d expected no less, but the words still
made his shoulders hunch. Then he heard the scuff of boots and something blocked the light.

“Don’t go upstairs, you dolt,” Rose snapped. “Look in the yard. That’s where he’ll be going.”

The boots scuffed again, and the light came back. A moment later, he heard boots clumping down the stairs ahead of him. Rose sighed, and the door slammed shut, leaving Nick alone again. He remained utterly still while his heart thundered and his mind raced. If he was going to get out of this place, it wasn’t going to be by these stairs. He went down the last few steps that led to Rose’s door, then paused, thinking of the pocket knife. If it hadn’t been a church, he might have taken a chance and turned the knob—but instead, he moved past.

The next door opened into a room that might have been used by the choir, because it held a row of black robes on hooks. Nick grabbed one, pulling it over his filthy clothes. From there, he found the choir loft and, at the other end of that, a stairway to the main floor. But he wasn’t sure that was a victory, for by then the entire church was crawling with airmen and guards.

Nick’s insides turned to ash, a chill sweat trickling down his ribs. He was all too conscious of how he looked. A robe couldn’t hide his face; his scruffy beard and lank hair only emphasized his dark features. He’d never known his parents, but everyone said he had the look of a Gypsy. In a place like this, he stood out like a wolf among sheep.

He didn’t relish going underground—not so soon after finally feeling fresh air—but his best chance was to get to the crypt. He’d seen the monastery from the rooftop. He knew little about history, but he was almost certain the Benedictine monks kept to themselves rather than mixing with the world. That gave him an idea.

He started down the aisle, walking a measured pace with his head down, as if deep in contemplation. He walked silently, keeping his footsteps as light as the shadows and pleading with the darkness to hide him. To his right, niches held the tombs of wealthy merchants and celebrated knights, faithful dogs at their feet and marble ruffs framing pale
faces, their hands folded in eternal prayer. To his left, pillars screened the aisle from the pews, their delicate fluting giving the illusion of a divide. High above, the pillars burst into fan vaults, like the exotic palms from a South Seas island enchanted into stone. Dead ahead, there was a double door. In two other large churches he knew, that spot led down to the crypt. Nick prayed this one held true to form. If nothing else, it was a reasonable place to hide.

But a pair of guards was coming directly toward him, one the same man who had removed his chains. Nick’s hands instinctively fisted, as if refusing to be shackled again. As the guard lifted his eyes, Nick turned to his right, drawing farther into the shadows beside a sleeping crusader. Every muscle tensed as the guards walked right behind him, their feet loud in the vaulted hush. And then they stopped.

Nick was already in motion, hurtling toward the double doors. He was close now, only a dozen yards away, but he wasn’t used to running anymore. He could hear their feet behind him as he banged through the door, desperation making his feet fast on the steps.

“Damnation! There’s no light down here,” one of them snapped.

Nick stumbled but leapt, landing clear of the steps. He crouched in the moldy, damp silence, hoping for the best. The other guard stopped, fumbling in his clothes. Nick could just see them in the light from the door above—a pair of backlit shapes patting their pockets for matches. He took the opportunity to creep into deeper shadow.

Then the second guard—Nick’s special friend—drew out a chemical lantern, shook it, and twisted the shutter open. A lurid green glow surrounded the two men.

“Ugh, smells foul down here,” said one. “Like something died.”

“It’s a crypt, you buffoon,” grumbled the other.

“Do you suppose there are rats?”

“Only if they like very old leftovers.”

Nick backed away, leaving them to bumble about at the foot of the stairs. They inched forward, looking from side to side at the sarcophagi arranged in haphazard rows across
the floor. There were vaulted arches here, too, but they were plain, the only ornament leering faces at the top of the pillars. It was clear from the tight shoulders and stiff walk of the guards that they didn’t enjoy hunting through the graves. That was good. Jumpy men made mistakes.

Nick crouched behind a marble tomb, peering around the corner to watch his pursuers. As he had hoped, they were going deeper into the crypt, leaving the safety of the stairs behind. Nick looked around for weapons. There were plenty of stone swords and even a few real ones resting atop the graves, but nothing that looked like a match for a rifle. He was good with knives, but his pen knife was hardly up to the job. So instead Nick found a piece of fallen masonry the size of his fist. This was a back-to-basics moment. Then he rose and glided along the ancient marble floor, quiet as the dust.

He waited until they came to a narrow passage, where one fell behind the other. Nick came up behind the shorter of the two men, clipping him behind the ear with the rock. He dropped like a sack of laundry. By the time the other one turned, Nick had vanished again.

From where he was crouching behind a pillar, he heard the low cursing of the guard. There was a note of fear in the mumbled words that Nick understood all too well. His own fingers were shaking, nerves wound to a screaming pitch of desperation. Nick clutched his weapon, the sharp edges digging into his fingers. He heard the awkward footfall as the guard stepped around his friend, and then hurried back toward the stairs—no doubt going for help.