The Gilded Scarab (38 page)

He copied Ned, but I didn’t want his kisses. I couldn’t jerk my head away. He straightened up, and his feet went past my eyes, his tread deliberate and unhurried. He said something to Ned, too soft for me to hear, and they were gone, leaving us lying helpless on the floor. The door to the street banged shut.

It lay on its back a few inches from my free hand, where it must have fallen when I was dragged in here. Wing cases spread wide, it whirred and chittered. Its legs kicked spasmodically, like any beetle fallen on its back and trying to turn itself over. Its legs thrashed again. Slowed. Stopped. It gave a little hiccupping
ker-chank
and was still.

My watch.

My scarab watch.

“C
APTAIN
L
ANCASTER
!
Rafe! Wake up, sir. Wake up.”

I forced my eyes open. Someone…. Hugh. Hugh bent over me, one hand against the pulse in my neck, his other arm outstretched. He was shackled to Alan Jenkins, who was trying to see to Hawkins lying a few feet away, their manacled arms stretched out to the fullest extent. Behind them, the door to the coffee storage room had burst open.

“Can you sit up? You and Sam are manacled to the roaster, and we’ll have to get some bolt cutters from somewhere.”

I could move a little now, slow and feeble as an infant. My mouth was dry, and I had to work it for a second or two to get enough moisture to speak. “Pistol. Pocket.”

Hugh frowned. He reached into my right-hand pocket and found the little hideaway gun. “Perfect! Hold on.”

He half turned away. He and Alan maneuvered to stretch the chain between their handcuffs across the pistol mouth, pointing it into the coffee storeroom where it could do least damage. He set it to a short sustained photon burst. The beam lasered through the chain and flashed into the storeroom in a crackle of red lightning. A flare of light and flame billowed out the storeroom doorway. The air smelled of flash-burned coffee.

“Help. G-get help.” I did not want to be roasted along with my coffee. A little more movement came back to me… twitches of the fingers, the ability to swallow more easily. But I couldn’t move far or fast. I shook with every breath, with muscle tremors in arms and legs, and pins and needles in my hands and feet. Hell. Neural disruptor charges were sheer hell.

Hugh’s hand pressed mine. “I’m on it. Don’t move.” He darted off into the office next door. He was back within seconds. “The wire on the telephone’s been cut through. Your gun’s gone from the desk drawer too. I think they smashed all the lights in the hallway—it’s pretty dark in there.”

Alan Jenkins hobbled over to Hawkins. “Bugger. They’ve taken his Marconi. Mr. Edward?”

“Daniel took him. Don’t know how long ago.”

“Not that long.” Hugh came back to my side. He had the fire dampener cylinder with him. He hauled me half-upright, like he’d haul a sack of coals, and pulled me away from the roaster until the manacle chain holding me to it was stretched out taut. “Only about twenty minutes. Hold still.”

He cut through the manacle chain with the hideaway gun, igniting more coffee bags in the storeroom, and propped me against the roaster. He pointed the fire dampener cylinder into the coffee storeroom. A burst of white foam, and he slammed the broken door on the smoke and steam, jamming the cylinder against the bottom of the door to take the place of the broken lock.

“I think that’ll sort it.” He ran to help Alan.

The scarab watch lay still and quiet. Unmoving. What in hell was it? Not merely a watch, that’s for certain. Whatever else it was, it was a miracle of miniaturization. Obviously it hadn’t been a mouse in my room at night, then, but this mechanical insect skittering about and… what? Spying? Collecting intelligence? Checking to see if I were sleeping with someone, no doubt. I could just see Daniel sending it to see if there were another pair of trousers draped over the chair. He set the scarab to spy on me, at all events, to listen in to my life. Typical that he’d use a device this sophisticated for something so bloody trivial. But that had to be it. Daniel used the scarabs to snoop. He had repeated things he couldn’t possibly have overheard himself, things from when I talked privately with Ned. Ned had a scarab watch too. Another present from Daniel.

The little
sneak
.

The pathetic, feeble, jealous little sneak. He was contemptible. He was beyond contemptible.

He had Ned. Oh God. Ned.

“Hawkins?” I raised a hand to my head. I hadn’t felt so ill since the night we celebrated the Queen’s diamond jubilee on the brew the
Ark Royal
’s engineers distilled from old aether fluid siphoned out of the engine sumps. For flavor, they said.

“Coming out of it. He’s had a hell of a bang on the head.” Hugh’s gaze darted around the room, as if looking for more threats. He frowned. “What the hell is going on, sir? Who was that?”

I could move more easily now. But slowly, and it hurt. It bloody hurt. My nerve endings had been scraped over with a rasp. “Give me the pistol.”

Hugh obeyed and handed it over. Alan hobbled away, clattering through the office and heading upstairs. Hawkins turned his face toward me. It was a mess of blood running down the left side, into his eye and down the side of his nose and mouth to drip from his chin. Head wounds bled like hell. He opened his mouth and ran his tongue over his lips, grimacing.

“Ned?”

“Meredith. It was Daniel. He took him.”

The muscle tremors were bad. I couldn’t get up. I shuffled on my bottom to get to the scarab watch. My hand shook as I got my spectacles out of my pocket where Ned had put them, and it shook as I took aim. I had to jam the barrel up against the watchcase to hold it steady. A split-second burst and the scarab glowed, melting into a puddle. Flames danced on its surface. I pressed them out with my shoe, gilding the sole. A diamond winked up at me out of the mess. Whatever it was, this mechanical scarab Daniel gave me, it could spy no longer.

Daniel Meredith had to be mad. And he had Ned, my Ned.

Hawkins’s gaze moved from the remains of the watch to me, his eyebrow rising. Hugh frowned. I leaned my head back against the roaster and fought the desire to be horribly and extensively sick.

Hawkins was tougher than I was. He jackknifed up, pulled up short by the manacle still holding him fast, handcuffing him to one of the roaster’s massive pipes. He pulled on it hard, but it would take more than a mere man to move that thing. Cast iron and built into the fabric of the building, it wasn’t going to move. Hawkins’s wrist would snap first.

“Let me get it.” Hugh held out a hand for the pistol. He had to angle the shot against Hawkins’s manacles very carefully, to avoid setting the entire building alight.

“Fire dampener!” I said, with a sharp gesture. Who knew wall plaster could burn like that? The prospect of immolation is a great motivator. It got me pushing myself to my feet, using the roaster as a prop. Mistake. The floor heaved and pulsed under me, my knees shook, and I had to swallow hard to keep down the nausea.

“Wha’ hell ’append?” Hawkins demanded. He swallowed hard and articulated with care. “Meredith?”

“Yes,” I said.

Hawkins shook his head, his mouth twisting. Speech came easier. “Him? But he’s no threat! He’s known Ned for years.”

“He was the one gloating over me, anyway.”

Hawkins ran his hand over his face, smearing the blood. “How’d he get in here?”

“He was the last customer. He waited right until closing and everyone was gone, and we were hinting it was time for him to go as well, when he pulled that gun on us. Made us lock up as if nothing was wrong and then hit us with the disruptor charge. Me and Alan woke up in that storeroom. Took us bloody hours to break the door down.” Hugh rubbed his shoulder ruefully. “We made a big push when we heard him shoot you and the captain, Mr. Hawkins. Still took us a bit to get out of there.” He grimaced. “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have let him….”

“He had a gun on you. Not your fault. Ned’s my responsibility. Mine. How’m I going to find him?” Hawkins tipped his head back and closed his eyes.

Something tugged at me, but before I could think about it and work it out, Alan’s jerky gait was loud on the stairs and the hall floor. He burst back into the storeroom. “They got into the cache upstairs, Sam. The guns are there, but he’s smashed every aether tube. We could use ’em as clubs, maybe. The Marconis are gone. We can’t get word to the House.”

Hawkins sagged, but it was only for a second. “Where the hell is Rosens?”

“Daniel wasn’t alone,” I said. “At least one man with him here and from what he said, Rosens and Abrams are probably out of the game.”

“What little I could hear through that door, Sam, the captain’s right there,” Alan said. “Pretty sure they said they’ve got people watching the street, too. We’re going to have to play this carefully, if we don’t want to tip our hand.”

“Shit,” said Hawkins. He closed his eyes for a moment then straightened up. “Peters, get over the back wall and get Will Somers’s weapons stash and his Marconis. If the bastards didn’t get to those too.”

Get Will’s weapons stash? Why on earth did a pâtissier chef need a weapons stash? I leaned back against my wonderful, not-moving-at-all roaster to stop the room tilting and spinning on me. Who the hell cared what a pâtissier chef wanted with weapons?

Hawkins used the roaster to pull himself to his feet. “What did he want? What did he want with Ned?”

I shook my head and regretted it. Something… I knew there was something. If I could just
think
.

Hawkins grimaced. “Never thought he’d do this. I didn’t trust him much, but I didn’t think he had this in him.”

“No. We all underestimated him.”

We were quiet for a minute or two. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the roaster.

Ned. Oh hell. Ned.

I might have blacked out again. I don’t know. All I know is it seemed the same instant that Will Somers was tilting my head back and forcing a tube between my teeth. A mistake. Only my teeth had been holding back the sickness.

“Damnation!” Will turned me sharply and let me hang over his arm as I retched and coughed and choked. There wasn’t much to come up, but it wasn’t pleasant. “Sam, here’s a Marconi.”

“Oh thank God,” Hawkins said. He spoke rapidly into the communicator while I retched up my toenails.

When I’d finished, Will tried again to get me to drink the decoction in the bottle. “Try and keep it down, Rafe. It’s something Abrams makes to restore the balance of your humors or something. It’ll steady you.”

It tasted bloody awful. Rank and turnipy, like something out of a silage tank. Keeping it down took real willpower, but in a few minutes, three at most, my humors apparently had their balance well on the way to restoration, and I could take an interest in the world again. I straightened cautiously. Everything stayed in place. My head, though still thumping, didn’t fall off, my gut roiled less, and the world wasn’t heaving under my feet. A distinct improvement.

Will stepped back, nightgown tucked into a pair of trousers, a harquebus in one hand. It looked like every damn inhabitant of Bloomsbury was a secret member of the Protect Ned Winter Society, and any minute now Cousin Agnes would steam in here in full battledress and bristling with laser pistols and bandoliers. It wouldn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was they had all done such a damn bad job of it.

Will’s free hand on my shoulder made me start. “All right, Rafe?”

I couldn’t find the words. I shook my head.

Will grimaced and pulled me into a rough, one-armed hug. “We’ll find him,” he said in my ear. “We’ll find him and get him back.”

“Yes.” I took a deep breath. “Is everyone around here not what they seem? Because I’m not going to cope if Mrs. Deedes rolls up in an armored autocar.”

“Oh, I’m exactly what I seem, Rafe. I’m a pâtissier chef, and I’m the best one in Londinium. But I agreed to keep some extra weaponry as a backup for Sam, and, well, long before I was a pastry chef, I was a soldier.” He hefted the harquebus in his hands. “I can use this. I’m here for you, though. I don’t really know Ned.”

He was a kind soul, was Will. He gripped my hand and stood shoulder to shoulder with me, helping hold me up. One day, one day when this was all over, I’d tell him what that meant to me.

Annabelle Somers came in with Hugh. She wore a pair of Will’s breeches and had her arms full of guns. She put them down beside Hawkins, keeping back two pistols. She gave me a dry little peck on the cheek and, more to the point, gave me one of the pistols. It was primed and ready, the plasma chamber full of pale green aether, a thin wisp of scarlet phlogiston writhing through it. For an opera singer, she was a very practical woman.

Hugh brought a bag of Marconis and sundry other items for waging war: flashbangs, brimstone flashlights, night goggles, and such like. Hawkins, still talking into the Marconi, gestured to me. Alan rooted through the bag and tugged out another Marconi communicator. He fitted it onto me.

“They’re getting the Gallowglass,” Hawkins said tersely. He tried to draw himself up to attention as he spoke into the Marconi. “You heard, sir? We were ambushed in here, sir. A neural disruptor charge. Lancaster says it was Daniel Meredith.”

“Meredith? But they’ve been friends for years!” The voice coming through the Marconi was used to command and obedience, a cut-glass aristocratic accent. The Gallowglass. It had to be. “He took Ned?”

“He threatened to kill us if Ned wouldn’t go with him peaceably,” I said.

Ned. Self-sacrificing, responsible Ned.

“No clue as to where?” The Gallowglass’s voice rose, alarm biting in it. “Dear God! Where?”

It hit like a hammer blow. Of course. Of course that’s what Daniel was after! How stupid was I not to have realized it earlier? So stupid. So very, very stupid.

I shouted as the revelation hit. “I know!”

Chapter 25