The Demi-Monde: Summer (55 page)

‘Battle stations,’ Lai Choi shouted. ‘Load hot shot. Target dead ahead. Lowest elevation. Bow gun to fire at my command.’

Immediately the alarm bell clanged and there was a rushing of slippered feet as the crew raced to their stations.

One hundred and fifty metres.

One hundred metres.

Fifty metres.

The Monitor’s turret began – ponderously – to turn towards the
Wu
. They’d been seen!

‘Fire!’

The
Wu
’s two bow guns – twenty-five-centimetre rifle-bore cannon cast in Beijing – fired, the twin explosions making the ship shudder and filling the bridge with the cloying, choking stench of cordite. As Trixie watched, the two shells arced through the night, the first clearing the target by a comfortable couple of yards. They were more fortunate with the second shot: it hit the Monitor amidships.

‘Prepare to ram, brace yourselves,’ shouted LieutenantFemme Lai Choi.

Once he was inside the Temple it had been relatively simple for Vanka to slip away from the crowds of guests attending the ceremony: with so many dignitaries packing the place the absence of a nonentity like him would go unremarked. And there were dignitaries aplenty. He had already seen His HimPerial Majesty Shaka Zulu and his retinue make a grand entrance, followed by all of the senior members of the Venetian nobility.

And as he watched these VIPs take their seats, for the first time Vanka fully appreciated the magnitude of what Kondratieff had been planning: in one fell swoop he would destroy the leadership of Venice and NoirVille. All Vanka could do was try to ensure that he and Ella weren’t numbered amongst the dead.

He bustled up a staircase to the balcony that circled high around the Temple walls and ducked behind a balustrade where he was both concealed and had a perfect view of what was happening twenty metres below him on the Temple floor. He settled down to wait, the only problem being that waiting gave him a chance to think and thinking gave his imagination an opportunity to run wild.

Vanka had always regarded himself as a pragmatist not given to flights of fancy, but now as midnight approached and the
night’s darkness enveloped the Temple, he began to feel distinctly uneasy. The Dark seemed to be crowding in on him, casting long shadows over the world, and he had the awful suspicion that tonight the HimPerial priests wandering around the Temple waving their incense burners to and fro would unleash a djinn that most certainly would not go back into its bottle.

But there was no time to consider this further: a single blast of a trumpet reverberated through the Temple, signalling that the ceremony had begun.

Her spirit dulled by the effect of the unguent that had been poured over her body, Ella was taken out of the room and down a long, narrow corridor, coming to stand before the two huge bronze doors that barred the entrance to the main hall of the Temple.

Billy was already standing there waiting for her, the boy clad in a golden robe with a crown bedecked with two horns on his head.

He gave her a lopsided grin by way of welcome. ‘Hiya, Sis, see they got you all dressed up to party.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Thought you were so damned smart, didn’t you, playing this Lilith bitch and aiming to use me so that you got to be Nigga-in-Charge? But you got it wrong. It ain’t me who’s gonna be sacrificed, Sis, but yous. Real classy end for an around-the-way girl like you, eh?’

‘If you would intone the incantation, Your Grace,’ suggested the Grand Mufti.

Billy shrugged. ‘Look, I gotta tell you man—’

The Grand Mufti nodded towards one of his priests, who handed a piece of parchment to Billy. With a shrug the boy read what was written there.

‘Beyond this gate Doge William is no more … the True Messiah stands in his place. And tonight I will use my power to have Loki rise again. Tonight is the time when Loki will come to lead ManKind to the Truth that is HimPerialism, when he will reclaim his throne as the Supreme Ruler of the Nine Worlds. Die knowing that it is your blood that brings the Nine Worlds to perfection.’ Billy laughed. ‘In other words, Sis, your ass is grass.’

The Grand Mufti gave a signal and one of the priests blew on a bronze horn hanging by the gate, the long, mournful note lingering in the crisp night air, reverberating through the Temple. As the note died, the gates opened to reveal that the path they were standing on ran forward into the Temple, the path flanked on each side by a line of priests.

The Ceremony of Awakening had begun.

An increasingly frantic Selim checked his watch for the tenth time in as many minutes. The steam launch seemed to be making incredibly slow progress, but then he supposed he should thank ABBA that when he’d got to the docks he’d been able to find a boat ready to sail.

‘How long before we land at the Hub, Captain?’

‘Perhaps thirty minutes, Your Excellency. I am making all speed but we have to be careful. The ForthRight has a number of Monitors patrolling the river and it would not do—’

His explanation was interrupted by a huge explosion to the Cairo side of the river. There seemed to be the mother of all naval battles taking place only half a mile or so from where they were steaming.

‘Damn the ForthRight navy, Captain. Make more speed: the life of His HimPerial Majesty Shaka Zulu is in danger. I must get to the Temple before the Column is lowered into position.’

Orders given, Selim returned to his agitated consideration of the river as it streamed so very slowly past, cursing that semaphores were invisible at night and that NoirVillian scientists hadn’t yet been able to duplicate the ForthRight’s telegraph messaging system.

He checked his watch again. There was still time.

Despite the extra lookouts Worden had posted, the attack came out of nowhere. One moment he was supervising the patrolling of the Nile River and the next the
Heydrich
was reeling from an explosion amidships.

‘Enemy WarJunk to starboard!’ a lookout yelled a little belatedly, but try as he might, Worden couldn’t see what was coming at him from out of the darkness.

Where the fuck …

He trained his spyglass in the direction the lookout was pointing.

There!

He spotted the phosphorescence dancing in the water stirred up by the WarJunk’s bow. Thanks to the moonlight he could just make out the low, menacing silhouette of the ship, its deep bow wave telling him that it was closing fast. The bastard was trying to
ram
him.

‘Engage target. Gunnery Officer, sight at starboard ninety degrees.’ Immediately the turret housing the two enormous twelve-inch Krupp guns began to rotate. ‘Fire as soon as you have a target.’

‘But do not damage the pontoon!’ screamed Crowley.

All Crowley’s intervention did was confuse the gunners, who fired too soon. Worden watched as two plumes of water rose about a hundred yards aft of the WarJunk, but, thankfully, shy of the pontoon.

‘Reload and be sharp about it.’

Very sharp. The WarJunk was steaming right at the
Heydrich
and with the tide behind it the bastard thing was moving at eight or nine knots.

There was no time to reload. Trying to keep the panic out of his voice, Worden yelled out fresh orders. ‘Full steam ahead!’ It was too late. Even as he watched, he saw the dark, implacable shape of the WarJunk loom out of the night and smash into the side of the
Heydrich
.

The noise as the
Wu
tore into the stern of the Monitor was earshredding, the howl of steel against steel augmented by the screams of the sailors who were crushed by the impact or were scalded to death when the Monitor’s boilers blew. Everything was reduced to a steam- and smoke-filled confusion and, despite having taken a tight grip on a handrail, Trixie still found herself being thrown along the deck as the WarJunk suddenly lost way. The
Wu
’s bow was forced up and over the Monitor, the ship bullying its way through the stricken vessel, smashing its decking as it went. But as Trixie hauled herself to her feet, she realised that if the
Wu
didn’t continue to make way – if it was forced to a stop – then it would make easy pickings for the other Monitors they had seen patrolling the river.

‘More steam,’ she shouted, but there was no one to relay the message: LieutenantFemme Lai Choi lay dead with a fifty-centimetre-long rivet sticking out of the back of her head.

Then …

As she looked around for help, the
Wu
leapt forward like a hound let off its leash. It was a charred Wysochi emerging from the depths of the gun deck who told her why. ‘Enemy gunfire has cut the pontoon free. The Column’s gone.’

Medal-giving duties completed, it was a distinctly unhappy Great Leader Heydrich who returned to his seat of honour high in the balcony facing the stage where the entertainment would be taking place. The incident with that bitch Nadya Krupskaya – a closet RaTionalist, if he’d ever met one – had ruined his evening. Even the prospect of torturing her in the Lubyanka – where she was already being taken – failed to raise his spirits.

But there were other irritants. He should never have agreed to have the Victory celebrations in the Crystal Palace. He hated the place, especially in Summer: there had never been enough ventilation and on a humid night when it was packed with so much sweating humanity it was especially unpleasant, an unpleasantness compounded by the tight, high-necked uniform he was obliged to wear. But it was more than simple humidity and the incident with the Krupskaya girl that was making the atmosphere of the Palace unpalatable, rather it was the perceptible feeling of resentment drifting up to him from the ranks of soldiers parading for his benefit.

And the reason for this resentment was simple: his army was tired of fighting. Checkya informers advised that there were mutterings in the ranks, grumbles that, having been at war almost constantly for five years, enough was enough and that too many of the ForthRight’s young men had died. When he had given his speech, he could
feel
the audience’s unhappiness, and the standing ovation he had been awarded had been almost perfunctory. Only seven minutes! It was an insult and, worse, he suspected that if it hadn’t been for the clappers von Sternberg had seeded into his audience, the applause might have petered out much more quickly than that.

Hopefully though, the appearance of this singer – this Naughty Nightingale – would allow the celebrations to end on a more positive note: the woman was apparently very popular
with the men. But even here there were concerns. He turned to von Sternberg sitting to his right. ‘Comrade General, you are sure this woman, this Nightingale person, will perform in an acceptable manner?’

‘Have no concerns in that regard, Comrade Leader. I have sent the woman a very strong message as to what the consequences would be if she should flout decorum. She understands that if she makes any untoward comments regarding any of the Party’s leaders or their policies, she will be immediately arrested and removed to the Lubyanka.’

Heydrich gave a distracted nod. Such a threat should be enough to keep anyone quiescent, but the problem with the working classes was that they had a distinct proclivity for
not
remaining quiescent. And, as he understood it, the Naughty Nightingale was
very
working-class.

Having seen such an impressive display of the might of the ForthRight, Empress Borgia judged her decision to surrender the Coven to Heydrich to have been the correct one. Without the Plague weapon it was impossible for the Coven to have stood against such martial might, and by cooperating with the Great Leader she had secured the most generous of surrender terms for her people and reduced the reparations demanded by the victors.

And it was a sign of the favour she was held in that she had been given the seat next to the Great Leader for the celebrations and had been introduced by him to the audience as ‘a great humanitarian and a bringer of peace’.

Peace … that was the problem.

Or more specifically the peace being preached by that bitch Dong E. She couldn’t for the life of her understand why Wu had permitted her to live. Hadn’t the fool realised the
potential Dong E had to make trouble? All she could think was that Wu had been so obsessed by having the girl entertain her as a Fresh Bloom that she’d lost sight of the danger she posed.

And now the girl was stirring up trouble by wandering around the Coven preaching that she was the true Empress and that to defeat the ForthRight the people had to embrace Normalism and engage in a policy of peaceful non-cooperation. She’d even managed to close the coal mines by bringing the miners out on strike and Heydrich had been less than impressed by
that
. Dong E’s influence had grown to such an extent that Borgia had been nervous about leaving the Coven to attend the Victory celebrations. But Crowley had insisted.

She shuffled nervously on her seat as she tried to put these troubling thoughts to one side and to enjoy the show. She was Empress now and above such trifles.

Vanka pushed himself closer to the edge of the balcony, peeking through the gaps in the balustrade. As the horn’s call echoed away to oblivion, two priests stepped forward and opened the gates to reveal the Grand Mufti and his retinue standing ready to enter the Temple.

The orchestra imitated the horn’s note and with every step the Grand Mufti took into the Temple the music gained in volume, the waves of sound – discordant and disturbing – skittered around the Temple like living things. It was music that betokened darkness and fear. And to complement the unsettling music, the priests ignited briars, filling the Temple with the acerbic scent of Epimedium. Vanka felt it cloying on the back of his throat and immediately became uneasy. People did strange things under the drug’s influence.