Merciless Reason (33 page)

XXXIV

REVOLT

TATTY WAVED TO THE MOB
of people behind her, calling for just a dozen of them to follow her inside. She had taught herself to mimic Cathal's voice as closely as possible, in order to pass herself off all the better as a young man. But she had always found bellowing in a deep voice difficult, and had never convinced herself that she could do so in a truly credible fashion. But people believe what they want to believe, and if her call to attack sounded somewhat shrill, that fact was overlooked as the oppressed tenants of the Wildenstern estate followed their black-clad folk hero as he rode his horse up the steps and through the front door of Wildenstern Hall. They were eager to capture as many of the tyrants as possible.

And while Tatty was sincere in her support of this angry mob, she was also intent on sparing any servants who had remained and might bear the brunt of the rioters. She planned too to limit the violence to seizing her relatives, rather than tearing them limb from limb. Whether she would succeed in restraining the mob was another matter entirely.

Some of the Wildensterns had chosen to stand and fight for their home, even as it burned down around them. Things could turn nasty very quickly. She knew for certain that Gideon kept a small cannon loaded with grapeshot in his room, and two of her cousins bred packs of savage attack dogs. And God only knew what booby-traps had been set in the hallways.

A handful of the most loyal and hard-bitten servants had also chosen to stay and defend the house. Two of these stalwart footmen were crossing the massive entrance hall as Tatty rode in, and were taken by surprise as she rode them down, kicking one to the floor as his colleague was rammed aside by her horse. Tatty jumped down from the saddle, drew a pistol with her left hand and a saber with her right, shouting at the two men to run for their lives as she started up the wide curving staircase on the right side of the hall. Instead of the dozen she had called for, scores of the people swept in behind her, their improvised weapons held up in readiness. Some of them stopped to set fire to the priceless tapestries and wall hangings with their torches, or throw family portraits to the floor and stab them repeatedly with their pitchforks.

Checking her scarf was still firmly pulled up over her face, she tipped the brim of her hat a little lower and set off along one of the hallways, making for the staff elevator at the back of the house. It was the fastest way down to the underground train platform beneath the building. She was in no doubt that most of the family would attempt to escape by train, and it was a long way round on the surface to the trainsheds on the far side of the mountain, and the entrance to the tunnel. It took the train up to an hour, starting from cold, to build up steam, but it could be in use at any time of the day or night and there was always a crew on standby. Even now, the train could be reversing back into the mountain to the underground platform, to pick up the fleeing family and carry them away to safety. If it had occurred to any of the enraged tenants to come at the house from that side of the hill, it would be devilishly easy to derail that train as it emerged at speed from the mouth of the tunnel. Tatty wanted this wrapped up with as few lives lost as possible.

One of Gideon's sons leaned round a corner in the corridor, his rifle aimed straight at Tatty. Dropping her sword, she threw herself in through an open doorway even as her cousin's shot hit someone behind her. With her back to the door, she slid over onto her side and kicked herself back out along the hall floor, her pistol already raised. She fired three shots. One took the young Wildenstern in the leg, one missed and the third hit him in the shoulder. He spun against the wall and collapsed to the floor. The mob rushed forward, shouting curses and threats. Their fury frightened her, and as they laid into the wounded young man she came to the sinking realization that their rage could not be easily restrained.

“Don't kill him!” she cried, running out into the hallway. Realizing her voice was too high-pitched, she called again in a deeper tone, “Tie him up and get him outside! There are more where he came from!”

But the mob would not be denied their revenge. This was the first Wildenstern they could get their hands on, and he screamed as they kicked him and beat him with the handles of their weapons.

“Stop!” she roared again.

“Stand back there!” another voice commanded—one that was used to being obeyed. “We are not animals! Hold back and let that wretch be! You'll have your reckoning, but not like this! Stand back!”

Eamon Duffy shoved his way through the crowd, followed by his masked gang of Fenians. They hauled the attackers away from the battered form of the young Wildenstern.

“Bind him and drag him outside,” he instructed two of his men. “Everyone else, follow me. And mind how you go, this place is a bloody death trap. Don't open any doors or take any stairs without my say-so.”

He nodded curtly to Tatty, a slight smile creasing the corners of his eyes. She wondered if he had guessed her identity. They had met enough times for him to recognize her voice if he heard it. If Duffy suspected, he did not let it show, turning to lead the newly disciplined mob along the hallway. Snatching up her sword, she hurried to catch up with him. It was only then that she realized he was looking around, unsure of where to go.

“We need to get to the train platform,” she muttered to him, so that only he could hear. “Left at the end of the corridor, then through the atrium to the servants' elevator.”

“Thank you, Miss … I mean, eh … thank you, lad,” he replied softly. “I had lost my bearings there for a minute. This mob needs to be directed somewhere, or lose the run of itself. The train platform it is.”

At the T-shaped junction in the corridor, Duffy took a quick look around the corner, gently pressed Tatty back against the wall and looking around at the eager faces behind her put a finger to his lips. He nodded to another two of his men and tipped his head towards the corner. Stepping out and left, with his revolver raised in front of him, he walked slowly and carefully towards the door at the end of the hallway, with his two men close on his heels. . Another fellow stood by the corner on the other side, keeping his gun trained to the right, watching for anyone from that direction. Tatty had been glad to have Duffy take command of the mob, but resented being left behind.

She rounded the corner just as the door swung open at the far end of the corridor. There was just a second to glimpse the massive gun mounted on small carriage wheels, its ten rotating barrels fed with a large stick magazine set into the top. And then it opened fire.

The ear-piercing shots came so fast they were almost on top of each other. Duffy and his two men were caught halfway down the corridor, with nowhere to hide. Bullets riddled their bodies, punching holes through their thighs and torsos and spraying blood across the carpet and walls. Tatty jerked back round the corner as the gun swiveled and pounded bullets into the plaster and floor where she had been standing.

“What in Christ's name is that?” one of Duffy's men asked, the color drained from his face. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, we can't fight that!”

“It's a Gatling gun,” Tatty said through gritted teeth.

She was trying to get the image of Duffy's last moment out of her mind, but it filled her head, blotting out all other thoughts. Panic welled up inside her. What was she doing here? She was no soldier—she was a young girl, still in her teens. What was she thinking?
She
had sent Duffy down that hallway. Fear and doubt paralyzed her. This was not the first time she had experienced violence or witnessed death, but she had led them all here and now going any further would cost even more lives. What had she done?

“We need grenades,” one man said.

“We used all we had just to get down past the nutters in the bleedin' tower,” another replied. “Look, we didn't come this far just to get turned back now. If we rush them, we're bound to take 'em if there's enough of us firin' at once.”

“Is that right, Francie? And how many of us d'you think they'll kill before we nail 'em?”

Tatty took some deep shuddery breaths and stood up, supporting herself by leaning on the wall. In the instant before it had opened fire, she had seen the two men operating the Gatling gun. They were servants, not members of the family. There was one thing she could do. So much for her secret identity.

“You men out there!” she shouted, making no attempt to disguise her voice this time. “This is Tatiana Wildenstern! Stand down from that weapon!”

Pulling her scarf down from her face, she turned away from the stunned men standing with her and threw her hat to the floor. Unwrapping the scarf, she undid her ruffled blonde hair and shook it free. Some of them uttered curses, or let out gasps of amazement. Others just stared, unable to believe their eyes. Remembering the tone Duffy had used to exert his will over the mob, she put all the confidence and authority she could muster into her words. It was no easy feat when her chest felt so tight it was as if it was bound with iron bands.

“Stand down, I say!” she commanded, and then stepped out into the hallway, pistol in one hand, sword in the other.

The gun did not open fire. Staring down its ten smoking barrels, she did not shy away from its glare, walking straight towards the gun along its line of fire. Two men crouched behind it, one on the crank handle to fire it, the other with a spare magazine in his hands. They stared at her with uncertain eyes.

“Stand down!” she snapped at them again.

Still they did not move, but they did not fire either. Tatty felt her stomach clench as she stepped over Duffy's ruined body, suppressed the urge to throw up as her boots squelched in the blood soaking into the green, ivy-patterned carpet. The bore of each of the ten barrels was like a gaping mouth, ready to spit hot lead through her. The air was soaked with the smell of gunsmoke, the tang of blood.

“Stand down!”

She was only a few yards away, a few paces. Still they did nothing. Raising her pistol, she let all the wild emotion churning inside her show in her face, let them hear it in her voice as she aimed her gun at one and then the other.

“Do as you're bloody told, you ignorant swines! Stand down or I'll shoot you down!”

Their nerve broke. The two servants staggered back, away from the huge gun, and then turned and ran as Duffy's peasant army flooded into the corridor behind Tatty. Men crowded round her, congratulating her, unsure of how to treat this upper-class lady in the guise of a criminal. Some patted her on the back, and then drew back, fearing the consequences of this inappropriate contact. Others wanted to lift her onto their shoulders, but Duffy's lieutenants shook their heads discreetly. No matter how unconventional a lady might be, seeing her manhandled onto a crowd of strangers' shoulders was a step too far in any man's book.

Tatty was a little disappointed at their discretion. Truly, even in this modern world, there were still places a woman could not go.

Leaning back against a door, she waved them on, needing to pause for a moment and collect herself before continuing. That had taken a lot out of her. Clutching her shaking hands, she let out a near-hysterical laugh, feeling a glow of triumph before a bitter grief descended over her as her eyes were drawn back to the three men lying dead in the hallway.

As the last of the mob moved on towards the servants' elevator, Tatty stood up straight. She was dimly aware of someone whistling a tune. It was a lullaby and, listening to it, she was filled with a calm, sleepy sensation, one which gave her relief from the misery she was feeling.

Then the door opened behind her and a pair of hands yanked her inside.

XXXV

AN APOCALYPTIC CHOICE OF MUSIC

THE NURSERY WAS FAST BECOMING AN INFERNO
of burning furniture, toys, and curtains. Fire spread in quickly-rising flames along the carpet. Daisy took one last look at Elizabeth and Nate still locked in a stand-off, weapons pointed at each other. Both were coughing badly, struggling to breathe. They were trapped now on the far side of the room by the fire. Daisy hugged Leopold to her and made for the door.

A shovel-sized hand pushed her aside and Brutus bent low to squeeze through the doorway. Nate's newly resurrected father surveyed the scene for a few seconds, then grabbed the door and wrenched it from its hinges.

“Go,” he croaked to Daisy. “Get Leopold out of here.”

Without looking to see if she obeyed his command, Edgar Wildenstern threw the door down over a burning grille of rafters that had fallen from the ceiling above. Using it as a bridge, he jumped across it to where Nate and Elizabeth stood.

“Brutus!” Elizabeth gasped. “I knew you would come!”

With startling quickness, Edgar thumped her once across the head with his engimal claw and caught her unconscious body with his left arm as she slumped to the floor. He grabbed Nate's arm and shoved him ahead, towards the fallen door which even now was beginning to catch fire. Nate did not need telling twice. He leaped across, darting to the doorway and seizing Daisy's outstretched hand. They ran along the hallway, coughing and gagging, their faces blackened, their nostrils and throats lined with a coating of soot.

Edgar followed them, covering distance quickly with his long strides, Elizabeth's body tucked under one arm like an overnight bag. Behind them, the ceiling of the nursery gave way as the burning roof above crashed down into it. Flames, smoke and charred wood spat through the doorway, as if giving chase to the fugitives.

They were on the second floor, and as they crossed into the tower Nate peered out a window into the chaos outside at the back of the manor house. Pieces of burning debris were falling from the floors above. Some, like fragments of paper or fabric, fell slowly, even spiraling to settle onto the gravel and cobblestones. Others dropped like a hellish rain, bouncing off the ground in explosions of sparks. Through this spectacle rode a figure on a velocycle. Nate immediately recognized Gerald's unmistakable form. His cousin was carrying something over his shoulder—a body. A body dressed all in black, but with long blonde hair dangling down Gerald's back.

“No!” Nate shouted, hauling the window open. “Don't you bloody dare, you bastard!”

Gerald either did not hear, or did not care to respond. He disappeared off into the darkness, in the direction of the church. Looking desperately around, Nate tore down the long drape off one side of the window, pulled out his knife and cut it down the middle.

“Nate? What are you doing?” Daisy asked, turning to wait for him.

“Go on with Edgar,” Nate said, as he tied the two halves together to make a section of material about twelve feet long. He was faced with no choice but to trust his hated father. He came up to her and kissed her hard on the mouth, ran his hand through his son's hair and then said, “Gerald's got Tatty. I have to go.”

Daisy's expression turned to one of dread, but then she just swallowed painfully and nodded. Turning away again, she hurried off along the hall. Nate spared his father a glance, wishing he could fathom what was going on in the mind of that bizarre combination of two human beings. Edgar locked eyes with him for an instant, then strode away after Daisy. Nate shook his head and knocked out the panes of glass above the window sash, tied the fabric around it and let it fall out the window. The air was fresher, cooler outside and he realized how hard it had been to breathe, even after they'd run from the nursery. The house was slowly suffocating.

“There'll come a time,” he grunted as he sat up on the window sill and swung his legs out, “when I'll just have to stop jumping out of windows.”

Then he seized the length of drape and dropped out into the night air.

The fabric only reached down past the first floor and part of the way to the ground floor, but it was enough. Nate slid down, let go, dropped the remaining twelve feet, hit the ground and rolled. He came up and immediately began running. The rain of fiery debris continued around him, and he had to brush off a couple of pieces as he ran. In the stables off to his left, he could hear the shrill whinnying of panicked horses. Courageous grooms were risking their lives to free the animals as the roofs of the buildings caught fire.

Sticking two fingers to his lips, Nate let out a piercing whistle. He heard a roar in response and the sound of wood shattering. A few second later, the door of the one of the stables was kicked outwards, splintering its painted boards, and Flash emerged. The velocycle spotted Nate and set off on a diagonal course away from the house to intercept him as he ran. Nate leaped onto its back without slowing down, seizing the beast's horns and tapping its sides with his heels.

The creature bunched its shoulders, tensed its flanks and hurled itself forward, gravel spitting from under its wheels as it raced across the yard in pursuit of their quarry. Its eyes probed the darkness ahead of them, following the tracks of Gerald's mount. Behind them, Daisy and Edgar ran out of the back door of the house, each carrying their burden in their arms. Daisy called urgently to the grooms for horses. Edgar dropped Elizabeth onto the ground without any particular care, once they were a safe distance from the house, and grabbed the reins of the largest horse he could reach. As he made off at speed after Nate, Daisy called to Hennessy, who was overseeing the rescue of the horses. Pushing Leopold into the head grooms arms, she caught the reins of the only saddled horse she could see and climbed onto it. Urging it into a gallop, she set off after Edgar. She could only guess at the ogre's motives, but she was determined not to let Nate face Gerald alone.

Overhead, thunder cracked the clouds, as if a dark force lay above the cloud cover, pushing to get through. Gerald did not go far. Nate tracked him to the copse that surrounded the graveyard, and through that to the grounds of the church itself. There Nate stopped, still in the tree line, and studied the church. This was where their conflict had begun before, after Gerald had sabotaged Berto's funeral and nearly killed everyone in the previous church. It was where Nate had found out how cunning and treacherous an enemy his best friend truly was.

Nate breathed deeply, letting his senses stretch out and take in all that they could. What might Gerald have planned? Booby-traps were not out of the question, nor were armed henchmen or even engimals driven to attack. Last time they had fought, Gerald had used his music to turn Flash against Nate. There was no question that he still intended to play that hand. After what Daisy had told him about the organ Gerald had designed—the one built of engimals' bodies—Nate knew his cousin had mastered a new level of control over the intelligent particles.

But Nate was
counting
on Gerald to use his music.

Leaning down close to Flash's ear, he whispered:

“He took your mind from you last time, but I'm not going to let that happen again.” He placed his hands on Flash's wide skull, near the roots of its horns. “I am your master, your friend, Flash. You'll never forget that again.”

Nate opened his mind, feeling just a hint of the storm of sensation that raged beyond it. Like a door opened just a crack, with a sandstorm blowing outside, Nate braced himself against the force trying to push open that door. He reached through that narrow opening and felt around until he touched Flash's mind, feeling the raw, savage thoughts of that feral machine, many thousands of years old. He let out a gasp as he made the connection and drew the mind to him, sharing its powerful instincts, enclosing them, protecting them. Then he closed the door as far as he could, keeping hold of Flash's thoughts.

This was the final secret Nate had learned about the intelligent particles. They were designed to bond with the human mind. If you understood them, and accepted what they could do, you could control them as instinctively as you would your own limbs. You didn't need any music. It was the truth that Nate struggled to hide, the truth Gerald must never discover.

Nate was about to start forward again when he felt the ground tremble beneath his feet. Strains of music began to seep from the church. Gerald was playing the organ.

“Oh, shit,” Nate murmured. “He's playing
Bach
.”

The staggered, rising notes of Bach's
Toccata and Fugue in D minor
lifted into the night air. It was a tune that Nate had always thought apocalyptic, and it seemed a fitting choice for this night. A jolt passed through the ground and Flash growled. Then a groaning, creaking sound erupted from the walls of the church. Ripples ruptured the earth around the building. Cracks ran like fast-growing roots up the stone walls. One of the stained-glass windows bloomed into a flower of cracks, then shattered altogether as its frame twisted. More windows burst outwards. The music rose in tempo, growing louder. Nate could have sworn there were notes going beyond his hearing range, notes that squealed high enough to hurt his teeth and others that thudded deeply in his chest. Or perhaps that last was his quaking heart as he contemplated facing Gerald. He knew any other human would have been overwhelmed by Gerald's music by this point.

With a crunching, wrenching sound, the wall over the front door of the church collapsed, the remains of its windows tinkling among the falling stone. A long snake-like shape stretched up and out, and Nate wondered if this was some new engimal he had never seen before, a serpentine over forty feet long.

But then more of the things drove through the walls of the church, planting themselves into the ground beyond its foundations. Parts of the walls tumbled inwards as the haunting music continued to play. The volume increased and the walls that contained the organ fell away. The tentacles—for that was what they were—braced themselves against the ground, and with a single powerful thrust, heaved a portion of the building into the air. A few clinging pieces of stone and masonry fell away from it, revealing the church's organ, housed in the body of some enormous engimal—a leviathan, Nate thought, one shaped like an octopus or perhaps a squid. Its body must have measured nearly thirty feet, the largest tentacles at least twenty feet longer. But where its head should have been, Gerald had transplanted a church organ, some of the pipes rising up like the smokestacks of a train, others, running under the hide of the creature.

It moved clumsily at first, swaying under its own weight, its tentacles unaccustomed to carrying its massive bulk on land. But Gerald's will coursed through it, transmitted through his fingers and the keys of the organ, and the precise but powerful flow of the music.

Oval and diamond-shaped markings glowed blue along its grey-green flanks as the rain began to fall heavier again. The monster raised itself up to its full height, and Nate saw Tatty's limp form clutched in one of its eight tentacles. Gerald looked out from his seat, twenty feet above the ground, grinned maniacally at Nate and then turned the beast around and walked it right through the side wall of the church, demolishing what remained of it, and on through a gap in the trees and down the slope towards the bottom of the mountain.

Nate sat there, awestruck and terrified, for nearly a minute. Even Flash had its head low, cowed by the sight of the mighty sea creature. A leviathan—the largest of the engimals on Earth, the creatures that could make sounds no other engimal could, that could transmit them further than any modern, man-made device. There could be no denying it, Gerald had pulled out all the stops. Nate had no idea how to launch an assault on such a beast—not without getting himself killed in the process.

“That's the whole point, though, isn't it?” he muttered to Flash. “That's what I'm here for.”

Kicking his heels into Flash's sides, he set off in pursuit of Gerald and his monstrous creation. Behind him, Daisy slowed her horse, pulling back on the reins as she saw the leviathan disappear over the edge of the hill, with Nate speeding after it. Edgar was galloping up behind her, his horse slower because of his great weight. She gazed in dismay at the scene of devastation Gerald had left behind him.

“I don't believe it,” she gasped. “He's destroyed another church.”