Phoenix Rising (7 page)

“At one factory, workers were disappearing for weeks on end and then reappearing with their bodies drained of blood. At another, workers were disappearing and reappearing with their bones absent. The third, the corpses were skinned. Like prize bucks.”

“Ah.” Wellington swallowed, focusing his over-active imagination on something other than his morning's breakfast and the gruesome tale Braun spun.

“After a few weeks, following my arrival, Doctor Sound insisted we cease the case. Thorne agreed officially. Unofficially, he kept the case open.”

“I see,” Wellington replied softly. “Never made any further progress, did he?”

“A few leads,” Braun said, her eyes turning to the pendant in her hand. “All of them just . . . ending. As if the person he was following never existed.”

Wellington's brow furrowed as he tried nonchalantly to get a look at the pendant. He could make out on one side of it a crescent shape, perhaps a waxing moon. Braun seemed to be lost in a memory of Agent Thorne, and was paying no mind to him or to the fact that she was turning the pendant over in her open palm. The opposite side of the charm was the image of a cat's head.

Her voice returned, still soft but managing to fill the heavy quiet. “I tried to tell him that he was getting a bit obsessive, but with Harry it was all about solving the mystery. This one was his great white whale, and he would not let it be. When he was gone for a full twenty-four hours, we traced his ring back to his apartments. It seemed apparent that he was determined to work completely in shadow, even forgoing the safeguard of his Ministry signet. I convinced Doctor Sound that Harry . . . Agent Thorne that is, enjoyed his moments of solitude, and perhaps that was what he needed at the time. Now, I wish I had not been so convincing.

“After a week, the agents available in town started the manhunt for him.” Her face twisted in disgust. “Campbell found him, stark raving mad in one of the side gutters of the West End. Sound refused to let me see him. Those two simply whisked him off to Bedlam, and cleaned out his desk while I was forced to take leave. I returned to the Ministry with my partner reduced to a memory. Apparently, my memory exclusively, seeing as how Sound took measures to keep Thorne out of conversations and reports.”

The pendant disappeared in her fist. Braun quickly scanned the other dossiers scattered across the tabletop, finding what appeared to be the oldest of the ledgers. “I think this ledger marked the beginning of the case: the first murder where a worker was found floating in the Thames. If we were to—”

“Eliza.”

That grabbed her attention. Wellington knew it would. “Your intentions are noble, but they are not your responsibility. Not anymore. I did not know Thorne, but if he served here at the Queen's Pleasure it meant he was of an exceptional class of man, a class that understands the importance of duty. Your duty is to the Ministry, not to the obsession of a fellow agent.” The softness melted from her face, but this time Wellington was ready for it. “The Ministry has given you this charge, Miss Braun, and if you wish to continue to serve at the Ministry you will want to focus on answering this charge. If you do not, there is no re-assignment.”

Braun went to speak, no doubt to protest. She stopped herself and then gave a tiny nod. Perhaps the last warning had sunk in. “You're right, Agent Books. You're absolutely right. Thorne would want me to fulfill my duty.” The ledger closed in her hands. “Do we need to order the books themselves, or merely put them in a single crate?”

An excellent question. One he hadn't considered. “Well, as there is so much to this particular case, it would be a good thing to try and arrange the ledgers with oldest at the far left, most recent to the right.”

“Spine up?”

“Yes, spine up.” Wellington sighed. “Perhaps we can return to this crate at a later time and actually mark the spines accordingly.”

“Well then,” Braun resigned. “For the Ministry, let's get to it.”

He watched her for a moment gather up a stack of ledgers, and open their covers, searching for a date. Within a few minutes, she had three stacks of books started, the first ledgers of each of the three cases. Braun then did something unexpected. She started singing. It was a delightful melody, lacking words but still managing to lighten the heaviness of her task. Wellington made a mental notation to himself that this was, perhaps, a defense mechanism of hers, allowing her to delve into the details of an agent she was so familiar with. Braun continued to sing the ditty as she stacked the books by chronological order, by case. She appeared to be in a rhythm now.

“Agent Braun?” he asked.

“Yes, Welly?”

The nickname would be addressed another time. But for now . . . “Thank you. For mending the leak.”

“Not a jot,” she said pleasantly. With that, she returned to her sorting, the soft singing resuming once again.

Perhaps the worst was over. Perhaps she would actually make a fine assistant.

CHAPTER FIVE
Wherein Our Dashing Archivist Tangles
with Our Beloved Colonial Pepperpot
in the Waning Hours of Morning

T
he scrawling of Books' pen was louder than usual. Granted, one expects there to be a hard scritching sound whenever a quill is put to paper and notations are recorded. This particular morning though, Wellington noticed the sound of his pen carving light impressions into the ledger open before him was like a spike digging through his head. He felt a knot between his brow, and realised just how distracted he was by it. But why? This was not an unaccustomed noise. In fact, he found the sounds of the Archives, from the
scritch-scritch
of pen against parchment to the ever-present hum of the generator comforting, more so than the sounds of his own house. The writing, on this particular morning, drove the unseen spike deep into his skull. Deeper and deeper with every note, integer, and letter formed by his hand. But why?

“Morning, Welly,” the voice echoed from the top of the stone staircase.

Then it came to him. His assistant, Eliza D. Braun, was late. Again.

He looked up at the clock suspended on the wall next to their shared desk. Seven minutes shy of eleven. “Only barely,” he whispered to himself. Then he shot back. “Cutting it close to afternoon, don't you think, Miss Braun?”

“Oh yes, Welly, well, you see I was on my way to the office when the neighbour, a sweet young slip of a girl, invited me for an early tea. As she is my neighbour and tends to my cat when I am out in the field—”

“When you
were
in the field, you mean?”

“Welly, she has been very sweet and understanding on taking care of Scheherazade. The least I could do was to join her. This was the first time I really had to sit down and get to know my neighbour a little better.”

Braun's face appeared imploring to him, as if she was silently asking, “
Well what would you do if you were in my place, Welly?
”

This was the midpoint of Week Two together in the Archives, and he felt himself grasping the shreds of his patience. At this rate, Wellington would be marching into Doctor Sound's office, demanding to know for exactly how long he was going to be punished with this woman's presence in his Archives.

Yes,
his
Archives. Perhaps Doctor Sound didn't care for that proclamation, but if it weren't for his sole efforts down here . . .

“Books, are you all right?” Braun asked him as she took a seat at her side of the desk. “You look as if you're about to yell at me for something.”

“Did you break anything on your way here?”

“No.”

“Then I'm not going to yell at you.” He placed his pen against the paper as if to resume his notations, paused and then yanked the spectacles off his face. “Miss Braun, this is yet another morning you have completely disregarded the time. Yesterday, it was a matter of recovering and returning field gear from your domicile to the Ministry. On prior mornings, you claimed it was your inability to adjust your morning routine accordingly.”

Braun nodded, clearing her throat. “Yes, well, I told you on that first day this job was going to take some getting used to, what with the Archives running on such a rigid schedule. An advantage of being a field agent was a certain latitude in morning hours and routines.”

“Rather too much latitude, if you ask me.”

“Or simply a thank-you gift from the Crown saying, ‘We certainly do appreciate you get shot at and risking life and limb for the throne. Sleep in, if you like. Cheers!'? Apart from the travel and the rather clever contraptions we get, there are very few benefits in being a field agent.”

“Perhaps.” He considered her for a few ticks of the clock, and then relented. “All right, Miss Braun, I will grant you this last week, but Monday morning next, eight o'clock sharp, I want you at your desk, busy working in the Renaissance.”

“Henry the Seventh?”

“Eighth.” Wellington said, continuing through the slight groan that Braun made. “We uncovered some new evidence on a recent case relating to Anne Boleyn.”

“Really?” she asked. “And what is that exactly? That she
was
a witch and had, in fact, put King Henry under a spell?”

He looked up at her. “As a matter of fact, yes. We came across a relic insinuating as such.”

“What exactly?”

“It's in front of you,” Wellington said, motioning to a large book nearly covering a third of her desk.

Braun gave a whistle as she ran her hand across its immense, ornate cover. “And this is to go into the Archives? For storage?” She hefted the tome up on its edge, impressed by its unexpected weight. “It's heavy. Beautiful, but heavy. What about this book condemns poor Anne as a witch?”

“That book,” Wellington said while adding to his current case's notations, “is
The
Book of the Dead
.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“
The Book of the Dead
—as in Ancient Egypt. As in the spell book used by the high priests of the City of the Dead. Along with blessings, prayers, and ceremonies, there are some rather powerful spells there.”

“Really? Like what?” Braun asked with a wry grin, “Like Anne Boleyn was Cleopatra or something?”

She continued to laugh while contemplating the massive book until making eye contact with Wellington. He continued to stare at her, his face half lit by the lamp beside him.

“Over the millennia,
The Book of the Dead
has been compiled, revised, and bound. With each binding, the previous versions have been destroyed. Yes, there are some fragments left, but that one is a rogue copy. The first page was tested and confirmed to be of a papyrus dating back to Cleopatra's realm. The latter pages and some of the intermittent replacements were on a parchment used in King Henry's court. Apparently, this rogue copy was found in the Tower.”

Gingerly, now having an idea of how old some of the pages within its binding were, Braun lowered the ancient text flat, and then opened her own ledger. She clicked her tongue while flipping through its pages, giving a soft “Ah!” on finding the grid she had created following Wellington's specifications.

“Let's see now . . . Item?” Braun looked at the book for a moment, then uttered as she wrote, “
The . . . Book . . . of . . . the . . . Dead
. Origins?” She looked at it again, then at Wellington who was watching her. The patience he was concerned about was now slipping fast, as she spoke while writing, “Eeee . . . gypyt. Quantity?” Eyes up, then back to her ledger. “One. Description?” Wellington took a deep breath, struggling to keep from erupting into a frenzy as she muttered, “Big . . . black . . . aaaand . . . dead.” She then punched into the engine's main interface:

ANNE BOLEYN

Eliza pressed two more keys, and the pulley system lowered to her side of the desk where she hefted the large book into its basket.
The Book of the Dead
was hoisted above them after she pressed another key. Watching it disappear, Eliza gave a nod and returned to her open ledger. She gave the item catalogue a single check, smiled proudly, and then closed the ledger.

“Right then, time for lunch.”

Had he been drinking tea, he would have sprayed it across the desk. “But you just got here!” Wellington insisted.

Braun stood from the desk as she checked the fob at the end of her bodice's chain. “Oh, Welly, hush! I think you will agree the sign of a civilised society is a regular dining schedule.”

“Weren't you just tardy on account of a late tea?”

With a heavy sigh, she rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue, in a manner hauntingly similar to his own mannerism. “No, had you been paying attention you would have heard me say my neighbor invited me for an early tea, and as ladies do, we got to talking. I needed to get to know her better and she is a delightful girl. Husband is an upstanding man in business. They were talking about having a child, so perhaps it is good I am no longer in the field, what with my ca—”

“Miss Braun!” Wellington snapped. “You just arrived. And it is rather early, don't you think, for a luncheon?”

“This is also part of the challenges in adjusting to your more regimented schedule, Welly. I was endeavouring to be on time today so I took in an early breakfast. Then I had the early tea, and now I am hungry once more. So you will have to excuse me. I will not work across from a gentleman with my stomach growling.” Again, she checked her watch and grimaced. “Right then, toodle pip and all that. See you in an hour. Perhaps.”

With a rustle of skirts, Braun disappeared into the shadows of the Archives and then re-emerged as a bright cutout of light colours against the dark wall supporting the stone staircase.

Wellington, his fingers drumming against the desk, watched her ascend. This woman had some amazing gall. To show up for her assignment only to leave for a midday meal after ten minutes of work? Disgraceful! How could this insubordinate harridan be one of the most outstanding field agents of the Ministry? Her results must be truly astounding.

Wellington sniffed, and returned his attention to cataloguing the El Dorado vases . . . minus one. That was when he sneezed.

Wellington, while removing his handkerchief, sniffed again. And again, he sneezed, this time properly. His nose was starting to clog up a bit, but not before he identified the culprit: lilacs.

Wait a moment
, he thought.
Agent Braun was wearing . . . a dress?

The door at the top of stairs closed quietly, and he felt his back straighten. He gave another sneeze, and simmered at his end of the desk as he blew into his handkerchief.

Wellington now knew where his patience came to an abrupt end—wherever Miss Eliza D. Braun was headed.

He walked around to the back of the engine and cast a nervous glance to the hatch Eliza had just secured. Wellington counted silently, and assured himself no one would be surprising him with a visit. Why would today be any different?

The hidden terminal unfolded from its concealment and hissed to life, its display slowly going from onyx to dull amber. Wellington wriggled his fingers, feeling a hint of excitement at hearing his knuckles lightly cracking. His fingers then danced across the keyboard, but his eyes remained on the display:

ACCESS ETS

His eyes went back to the heavy iron door four storeys above. If anyone were to walk into the Archives now . . .

As the analytical engine would do when preparing tea, it gave a single chime that brought his attention back to the tiny interface.

ETS ACTIVE. AGENT?

He knew this was crossing a line somewhere, but had she not done the same just scant moments ago? His eyes narrowed on the monitor as he typed:

ELIZA D. BRAUN

He could hear the pipes in his engine shudder, and its own internal hum swelled as it sent out its signal. It searched, drawing more and more power to do so with each ping it sent.

The display flickered for a moment, and then—materializing through the aether—came a reply.

AGENT LOCATED.

NEXT COMMAND?

Next command? Providing him a hiding place after confronting Agent Braun? That sounded quite appealing. Instead, he typed:

SEND TO TRACKER.

This would take a few minutes. That would give him enough time to get his coat and bowler. For this little venture, he didn't think his walking stick would be a necessity.