Cold Stone and Ivy (62 page)

One went down.

“YOU LITTLE WHORE
!”

The pistol swung in a savage backhand, sending her into the side of the engine-house with a thud. Lights were popping behind her eyes as he hit her again with the pistol, and again, until she dropped the oar and fell to her hands and knees onto the wood of the pier. She heard the pistol fire a second time, and then a third, before it clattered to the planks. She fumbled for the oar, caught it again, but his heel stopped her wrist, immobilizing her like the women of Seventh had done. Her ribs caught fire as he kicked her then, ribs and belly and chest, and it was difficult to draw breath. There was no light at all now, and she tried to scramble away but he caught her easily, and she felt him twist his fingers into her hair. He yanked her head up, bending her neck so far back that she felt as if it would surely crack.

It was difficult to breathe and she tasted blood on her tongue, and then a blade pressed into her throat.

MARY JANE SCREAMED
as the second shot bored in through the fabric of her skirts, slicing open the flesh of her thigh. Sebastien grabbed handfuls of fabric, hauling them both out of the path of the final shot and to the cover of a nearby longshoreman’s shed. The planks immediately grew dark underneath.

The young woman pulled herself to Rupert’s side, began to fumble with his bloody shirtfront, but he stopped her, taking her wrist in his hand. He looked up at his nephew.

“Go, Laury . . . Stop him . . .”

“Rupert?”

“I’m fine. See? Just a scratch.
Jolie Marie
will tend me. I could not be in better hands. Now go. He’s done his three shots. Save them if you can, but stop him.”

The Mad Lord glanced at the young woman. She nodded, so he rose to his feet, the locket whirring and sending sparks now up into the sky. He stepped around the dock, palms upward, and winds picked up as the frost began to descend.

“Homines e mulieres qui laesi sunt, nunc est ultio vestrum,”
he murmured
. “Accipite spiritum huius hominis et dimittite innocentem intra.
”

As he began to walk forward, ice crackled along the planks, up the bollards, and down the chains of the dock. Boats in the nearby water groaned and rose, hulls buckling, as the mighty Thames itself began to freeze.

“Homini e donni qui sunt laesi, nunc et ultionem vos. Accipere spiritus hoc homo et dimittere innocens intra.”

Ropes and cables snapped in the winds now and even the rooftops of the sheds began to peel and sway. Figures which, only moments before, had been but shapes of mist and fog, began to solidify, forming arms, legs, torsos, and finally faces out of the frost, until there was a mob of ghostly white marching with him along the quay. It was an army now, of flesh and bone, skin and ragged cloth.

“Homini e donni qui sunt laesi, nunc et ultionem vos. Accipere spiritus hoc homo et dimittere innocens intra.”

An army of the dead.

“DAMN HIM TO
hell!”

Suddenly, she was on her feet. The cold had rolled over them like a wave, and she could not stop her teeth from chattering. Renaud, too, was feeling it, for his body was shivering and his breath frosted the hair at her ear. The edge of the knife was burning with cold, creating blisters on her skin, and he hauled her to the door of the engine-house, swinging it open and shoving her inside. He bolted the door behind him.

At their feet was a spiral staircase, gleaming black in the dim gaslight, and she could hear the hiss and hum of the steam engines that operated the locks. He dragged her down after him, her boots clanking as they scuffed against the metal. Soon they were in the basement, and he dragged her toward the golden glow of the engine room.

Underground, once again.

Two massive steam engines flanked the room, their drums, cylinders, and pistons chugging like trains on a track. Two great, geared flywheels—each as large as an ox—drove the engines, and she was certain that a grown man could stand up straight within the cylinders had they been still. Steam was collected in long copper tubes to be reused in the pumping process that raised and lowered the canal to the level of the river. Still, with the heat from the roaring twin boilers, water dripped from the ceiling and formed rivers of its own across the concrete floor.

To her dismay, the only dockman manning the boilers was an automaton and it swivelled as they entered.

“Security code?” it droned, its eyepieces whirring with its attempts to identify them. Renaud released his grip on her, strode up to the robot, and efficiently twisted its head from its shoulders. The head bounced on a few wires, which he cut with the blade. It dropped to the floor with a clang. He turned to her and smiled.

“Your turn.”

She bolted, diving between the engines, searching for something, anything, that might prevent what was rapidly becoming her fate. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him lunge in after her, but she was small and quick and far less elegant than he. The flywheel rattled and hummed alongside her, creating friction of its own, and she was grateful that she was not wearing skirts. One slip—of a lock of hair, a lace, a sleeve—one small misstep could cause her to be pulled into the machinery and crushed in a heartbeat.

Like St. Katharine of the Wheel, she began to pray for a miracle.

She could see him dogging her behind the great iron gears, moving through the machine-works like a stalking cat, but in his pursuit, he left the way to the stairwell open. With a deep breath, she slipped out from under the drum and rushed for the stair. She managed to make it up the first three steps before he was upon her, dragging her back down again. Still, she kicked at him, striking his chin, his shoulder, his chest, before he caught and wrenched her ankle so that she heard something snap. She lunged forward now, clawing at his eyes, ignoring the pain as his blade opened red slices in her arms. Finally, he slammed her head into the metal rail and once again, lights popped behind her eyes. It was all the opportunity he needed.

Dragging her from the stair, he spun her around and tugged her in tight against his body. His right hand clapped over her mouth and, through a haze, she saw the knife flash in the gaslight and closed her eyes.

HE PAUSED AT
the door to the engine-house, at least two dozen dead pressing in on him from the air. He was not surprised to find it bolted, so he reached out the tip of a finger to draw a circle on the metal, leaving a slick of ice as it went. A star within it now, and he placed fingers onto each point.

“In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti . . .”

He raised his other hand to cup the locket.

“Amen.”

THERE WAS A
moment when everything changed and the hand dropped away from her mouth.

“Ivy?” said Christien.

Of Physics, Metaphysics,
and the Opening of the Clockwork Locket

SHE DREW IN
a breath and then another and another, grateful for the sweet sensation of air filling her lungs. She breathed until, from the damp concrete floor, she looked up at the man who only moments ago had been trying to kill her.

It was Christien.

Amazing,
she thought to herself. Exactly the same and yet so different. He was shrinking back, eyes wide, staring at the blood on his hands. The blade clattered to the floor at his feet.

He looked at her now, an expression of horror on his face.

“What is happening to me?” he wailed, and she could see him shaking in the dim gaslight. Her eyes flicked to the blade, to the puddles on the floor that were slowly beginning to crackle and frost. She looked back up at him again.

“You’re ill, Christien,” she said, carefully pulling first one then the other knee underneath her. “The locket—”

“Yes, the locket,” he moaned. “The locket makes me ill. It makes me lose myself . . .”

There was a stab of pain from her ankle, and she could see her breath as she gasped. A sound overhead now, and she glanced up as a droplet of condensation froze in a perfect icicle, hanging like the sword of Damocles over their heads. Slowly, ever so slowly, she reached for the blade.

“But we can help you. It’s not your fault . . .”

“What’s not?” He reached for her but she shrank back now. He blinked in bewilderment, and she could see tears brimming behind his lashes. “What’s not my fault? Ivy, please?”

It was very cold behind her, and she turned to see the black staircase growing white.

Suddenly there was a boom as the door above them shattered open. She ducked her head as a thousand frozen pieces rained down on them from above.

Illuminated by the locket’s flashing lights, the Mad Lord stood at the top of the stair.

“Renaud Jacobe St. John de Lacey,” he began, his voice hollow and echoing down like an automaton.
“Iudicium best in anima tua
.”

“Bastien?”

“Est iudicium in anima tua
,” he repeated as he began down the stair, the locket throbbing like a heartbeat. “There is judgment on your soul.”

“Bastien, please?” Christien moaned, pulling the gas mask from his brow. He threw it to the ground as if it had grown too tight.

Sebastien continued down the stair. In the flashes of Ghostlight, she could see the bones through his skin, his face empty like a skull, hands searing as they touched the cold metal of the railing.

Christien moaned again, pulled the glove from his hand next, and Ivy gasped at the sight. The finger that held the little brass ring was withered and black, tendons and bones visible beneath the rotting flesh. It was beginning to crackle with ice.

“Ego te ligo. Ei te ligant. Tu ligaris es.”

Christien was shaking now, and it broke her heart into a thousand shattered pieces. Like the door. Like the dog.

“Renaud Jacobe St. John de Lacey,
tu remittitur es
et corona servita est.
You are forgiven and the Crown has been served.”

Christien’s eyes snapped open, and he froze in place as the locket began to rise from his brother’s chest.

“May God have mercy on your soul.”

Christien stared at the locket, and she let her eyes fix on it as well. Not only was it hovering in the air, suspended at the end of its chain, she was certain it was slowing. It had been spinning madly up to this point but now it was slowing, its rotations almost ticking like the hands of a clock. Like a countdown. Like a breath.

The Mad Lord merely closed the paper-thin layer of skin that covered his eyes, and all sound ceased.

Faces white and long dead, mostly women, a few men, surrounded them. They were rising up from the floor, they were floating down from the doorway, they were peeling from the walls. Ivy could see them all now, real as her own flesh. One woman in particular had no face at all and now she was at Sebastien’s side, gesturing with her hand, and in her hand was her heart.

Finally, for a brief fleeting moment, she could see with the eyes of a cat.

She did not feel revulsion. She did not feel wonder. She felt very little at all, and she wondered if in fact she was also to be counted among the dead but simply wasn’t aware of it yet.

It was Ghostlight. Somehow, the strange, beautiful artifact possessed a power she had never imagined. In fact, it was as if she had stepped out of time, as everything around her now seemed to slow. The fire did not burn in the boilers. The belts and the pistons and the wheels slowed without so much as a squeak. The gears in the machine-works ground to a halt. All sound had ceased, all thought, all sensation, all life, all death, for even the dead were silent now, empty eyes drawn to the pendant about de Lacey’s neck. Everything was focused on that one thing, a simple clockwork creation of undiscovered elements, glass, and angels.

The locket was holding its breath and everything in the world held with it.

And with a click that sounded like the roaring of a waterfall, it opened.

A SMALL CROWD
was gathering on the quay. Dock workers, shipsmen, and drunks, all claiming to have heard pistol shots and coming to see. A bobbie had been sent for, along with a surgeon, and Mary Jane sat, stroking Rupert’s forehead with her fingers as he bled all over the planks. She seemed numb to the world, a fragment of a woman pushed too far, but she refused help when the few men offered, preferring to sit and wait for the surgeons herself.

His breathing was raspy, and she knew what that meant. She had seen her share of dead and dying. There was little a surgeon could do.

“It were right brave,” she said softly. “Pushin’ ’im outta the way like that. I never seen no-one do nothin’ like that before.”

“My boys,” he said. “I’d die for them.”

“Still, it were right brave, all the same.”

Suddenly, the crowd around her gasped, and she looked up.

The enginehouse of St. Katharine’s docks was shining.

ONCE, WHEN SHE
was little, she and her tad had driven out to the ring of great stones on Salisbury plain. It wasn’t a solstice, it wasn’t a festival, it was simply a night, and they lay on their backs in the middle of the stones to watch the stars. Being a city girl, she had never seen a sky so big, so black, and yet so amazingly bright at the same time, and star after star shot across the night like fireworks.