The Immorality Engine (19 page)

Fabian shuffled uncomfortably. He’d been expecting this, but talk of the Hobbes girl’s special talents always set him on edge. As a scientist, he was fascinated by the phenomenon, but he felt ill at ease every time he considered the facts. The girl could see into the future. He could not explain it. No matter how he tried, how hard he pushed Amelia, he could not find a rational explanation for her abilities. If he hadn’t known better, he would have written it off as a hoax, but he had seen the proof with his own eyes.

Fabian had spent long nights transcribing Amelia’s dreams, filling notebooks with her lucid rants, and sketching the visions she described. In time, he had witnessed those visions come to pass. It was remarkable. Truly remarkable. And it clearly had its origins in the realm of the supernatural, not the more knowable world of science. He feared he would never be able to uncover Amelia’s secrets, because he could not understand where her powers came from. They were outside his experience, more the fodder of priests and holy men than of medicine.

Yet Fabian couldn’t stop, couldn’t prevent himself from pushing further, from testing the boundaries, from experimenting on the girl. He needed to know what made her tick, just like the clockwork heart in Victoria’s chest. He needed to
understand
it. And he would not let go of the matter until he did.

Fabian realised the Queen was waiting for him to respond. “The prophecies remain the same, Your Majesty. Each and every one of them, no matter what I do, how many of them I create … the same thing, over and over. They talk of destruction, the engines of war. They talk of fire and death, of the tearing down of a great house. They talk of chaos and despair.…” He trailed off.

Victoria nodded. “Our enemies move against us, Fabian. The intruder was just a warning. There is more to come. These prophecies—we believe they talk of the destruction of this palace, of our death. They must be prevented from coming true, at any cost.”

“What shall we do, Majesty?”

“The Royal Engineers have fortified the palace. The guard has been doubled. Scotland Yard is at our beck and call. We are resolute and impenetrable. A fortress. We are England, Doctor, and we shall not fall.” Victoria raised a hand to her mouth to wipe away the bloody spittle. “It has been most useful to have our suspicions confirmed by the Hobbes girl. Most useful indeed. We shall be ready for them when they come. We see great need of the girl’s talents in the dark times ahead.”

If she survives that long,
Fabian thought. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. He was sweating again. He didn’t doubt the Queen’s words—she would be ready for the upstarts, and she would smite them with all the strength of a colossus for their impudence. But who would dare to go against the Queen? Who would be so foolish as to storm the palace? And what did they hope to achieve?

Victoria gave another racking cough, and Fabian saw her hand go to her mouth, saw blood dribbling through her fingers. He rushed forward, handing her a handkerchief to mop it away. “Majesty—you are not well. Allow me to assist you.”

Victoria waved him away with a low moan. He stepped back and realised that she was laughing. “We have not been well for a very long time, Dr. Fabian. A very long time indeed.” She spluttered again into the bundle of silk in her fist. “Leave us now. Go back to your little laboratory and continue with our experiments.” She turned away from him, wheezing and choking as she eased her chair away into the gloom.

Fabian seethed. How dare she dismiss him in such a fashion!

He stood, watching her retreat into the darkness at the rear of the audience chamber. For a moment, he felt a flash of empathy for whoever it was who was plotting her downfall.
Let them come. Let them tear down the palace, brick by brick. Let them shatter her Empire and leave it crumbling in the dust.

Red faced and furious, he stormed from the room.

CHAPTER

17

The hansom cab trundled along in the darkness, its wooden-rimmed wheels groaning in protest as it bounced over the uneven cobbles. A solitary lamp hung like a droplet of light from a curved brass arm at the front of the cab, and the driver hunched against the rain on his dickie box, wrapped in a thick woollen coat.

Inside, Charles Bainbridge was feeling weary and old. He’d been operating on nervous energy all day, what with launching a high-profile investigation, organizing a security detail for the palace, and liaising with the Queen’s Guard. He’d barely had time to stop and think. He’d also spent another part of the afternoon at the morgue—his third visit in as many days. He was growing strangely accustomed to the place. This time, however, he’d had the unfortunate experience of standing over a police surgeon—or, more accurately,
butcher
—while he performed an autopsy on the body they had recovered from the palace.

Aside from the long steel bolt in his chest, the man had been young, fit, and perfectly healthy. As the Queen had already noted, he was clean and well kempt, and had the air of affluence about him. He had close-cropped sand-coloured hair, olive green eyes, and was wearing a fine suit from Savile Row. He wore expensive cologne and had a taste for Prussian cigarettes. Aside from these minimal facts, however, painstakingly determined from multiple examinations of the body, Bainbridge had absolutely
nothing
to go on. He didn’t even know where to start.

Now Bainbridge was hurtling across town, returning to the palace for his second audience with the Queen that day. He hoped she would be satisfied with his endeavours. He suspected not.

Bainbridge slumped in the back of the cab. It looked as if it was going to be a long night, to cap a long day. He wished he could instead fall asleep with a whiskey and a fat cigar, perhaps reading his paper before the fire. It had been too long since he’d been able to enjoy a night like that.

He’d managed—just—to scratch out a quick note for Newbury, which he’d sent round to his friend’s Chelsea lodgings by courier. He wondered how Newbury and Miss Hobbes had got on at the Grayling Institute with Dr. Fabian. He hoped they weren’t planning any drastic measures without him; the gleam in Newbury’s eye when he’d talked about agitating the Bastion Society had been full of mischief, much like the Newbury of old. While that was encouraging, and indeed the result Bainbridge and Miss Hobbes had been aiming for, the chief inspector still worried that Newbury would end up putting them all in danger.

He was still concerned for Newbury’s health—and not only that, but for his mental state, too. Even with the best of motives, if he were addled by the Chinese weed, Newbury might go charging on ahead without due consideration. And Miss Hobbes, Bainbridge knew, would unthinkingly put herself at risk on Newbury’s behalf, simply by virtue of the fact that she was so desperately enamoured with him. He wished he could be at their side, offering a steadying hand. But duty called.

Bainbridge thought back over the events of the day. He still couldn’t quite believe the scenario the Queen had outlined for him that morning. Could she really be right? Would someone be daring enough, or foolish enough, to launch an all-out attack on the palace? Who had the means? Why should the perpetrators send a message in the form of a nameless assassin? And why was the Queen so adamant it was going to happen? What did she know that she wasn’t telling him?

To Bainbridge, it all seemed somewhat unlikely. There were too many unanswered questions. He remained unconvinced that the whole incident had been anything but the ill-conceived strategy of a chancer. Perhaps the intruder had simply wanted to get his name in the history books?

No—that couldn’t be it. If that were true, he would have left them some clue as to his identity. So, what, then? He sighed. There was much to consider.

Bainbridge was just about to reach for his cigar case when he felt a dull thud against the right-hand side of the hansom. He leaned forward, reaching for his cane so that he could rap on the roof and attract the driver’s attention, when the world suddenly shifted.

There was a detonation like a thunderclap. The hansom bucked and rocked dramatically onto two wheels, careening along the road for a few seconds before slamming down hard onto its side with a loud, splintering crack. The horses, startled, tried to bolt, dragging the broken carriage across the ground with a tortured screech. They neighed and whinnied in fright as they tried desperately to escape.

Amid the chaos, Bainbridge had been thrown unceremoniously to the floor, badly gashing his head above the left temple. Blood was running freely down his face. His knee had also been jarred in the fall, and he knew he’d badly bruised his right arm. He lay in a crumpled heap inside the broken frame of the cab, barely aware of what was happening, still clutching his cane.

Thud. Thud.

More explosives.

Bainbridge, still groggy, but acting under the auspices of self-preservation, sprang into action. Wrenching himself up using the seats as leverage, he stood in the shattered confines of the overturned hansom. The horses were dragging the wreckage along behind them, making it almost impossible to maintain his balance. His left eye stung where blood from his head wound was seeping into it, blurring his vision. But he knew he had to act.

Bainbridge wedged his cane between the remnants of the seats and held on to it for all he was worth, bracing himself for another explosion. All the while, he was running through possible scenarios, trying desperately to conceive a means of escape.

Woomph
. The explosion came with a deafening roar. The cab juddered and shook, sliding haphazardly across the street and slamming into something solid—a building?—before finally coming to rest. Bainbridge called out as he grappled with his cane, finally losing his grip and rebounding painfully off the seat beside him, thrown back by the force of the detonation and the resulting impact. He lay there for a second while he regained his breath. Then, battered and shaken, he dragged himself back up onto his feet. His twisted knee screamed in pain as he tentatively put his weight on it.

He had to get out, and fast. The only way out of the wreckage was up, through the right-hand door of the cab, which was now doubling as the ceiling. It would leave him wide open to attack, but he was trapped where he was, and to whoever was raining the explosives down on him, he was a sitting duck. It was only a matter of time.

Bainbridge retrieved his cane, held it vertically before him with both hands and thrust it upwards with all his might, bashing at the buckled panel of the door. It rattled in its frame but didn’t give. He tried again, and then again, and then finally with a third attempt the lock smashed free.

Climbing up onto the seats, Bainbridge scrambled towards the door, finding foot- and handholds wherever he could. With an almighty heave he managed to push it open, causing it to swing back on its broken hinges and clatter against the scorched side of the cab. He cautiously raised his head and peered out.

Nothing. Nothing but darkness and the patter of raindrops against the cobbles. There was no sign of his attacker. How far had the horses dragged the carriage after the first explosion? He had no idea. He was utterly disorientated. He glanced over his shoulder. The sliding cab had ploughed into a shop front, shattering the windows and scattering fruit and vegetables haphazardly over the ground. Thick black smoke was curling into the air from the front of the hansom, where the second explosion had ripped the dickie box loose from its housing. There was no sign of the driver.

Bainbridge pushed his cane out onto the side of the cab and then, using all the strength left in his upper body, he clasped the sides of the doorframe and wrenched himself out, dragging his legs behind him. He slid off the side of the vehicle to the slick cobbles below, stifling a cry of pain as he hit the ground. He wiped the blood from his eye with the edge of his sleeve, gasping for breath.

Bainbridge didn’t recognise the street he was in, but wherever it was, the area appeared deserted. Around him, everything was still and silent other than the lone creaking of the hansom’s wheel, still turning languorously on its axle nearby.

The peacefulness was shattered by a shrill, piercing whistle as something came hurtling out of the sky. This was followed by the dull
thunk
of metal striking the cobbles a few feet away from where he was standing. Another explosive round.

Bainbridge didn’t wait to ascertain precisely where the thing had landed. He dived for cover behind the wrecked shell of the hansom, flinging himself around the rear end of the vehicle and tumbling to the floor between the ruined cab and the shattered front end of the building. With horror, he realised that his face was only inches away from the gruesome remains of the cabbie, whose body had been nearly obliterated by the explosions. His torso had been blown open, spilling his internal organs across the stones in a red slurry, and his legs were entirely missing. His skull had fractured across his left eye orbit, and blood was still seeping out into the street, pooling beneath the cascade of spilled apples that surrounded him like a bizarre tribute. What remained of his face was filthy with blood and soot. The splayed-open carcasses of the horses were within sight as well. He could make out the rib cage of one and the haunch of another. The sight and smell of it nauseated him.

There was another almighty crack, as if the sky were splitting open. An incendiary device went up with a flash of light so bright Bainbridge wondered if he’d ever be able to see again.

He was thrown back by the impact of the cab roof slamming into him as it was shoved by the force of the explosion. He hit the floor awkwardly, jarring his elbow.

Rattled but still breathing, Bainbridge blinked desperately in an effort to regain his sight. He felt for his cane on the cobbles beside him. He found it, his fingers closing comfortingly around it. He might have use for it yet.

Stay down,
he thought.
Let them think you’re dead
. He tried to get his breathing under control, steadying his nerves as he waited for his vision to return.