The Mourning Emporium (33 page)

Bajamonte Tiepolo lifted his head and sniffed the air.

“Is that you, Undrowned Child?” he asked.

Teo kept her mouth tightly shut, trying to breathe as quietly as possible. The fact that he could not see her meant Il Traditore had indeed managed to drag his spirit into an almost human body. And that meant that his power was not only renewed—it was greater than before. It had become stable inside human skin, and was concentrated in a being that did not change shape or lose its memory.

“How do you like London, Undrowned Child? Did you see how I took my sweet revenge upon your friends, the English Melusine and the London Sea-Bishops who thwarted me in battle? And how do you like your frozen Venice now? How shall we say it? Ah yes, half dead and cleansed of all her tawdry art?”

He muttered, “Christmas Eve, I had to rely on bone-headed Ghost-Convicts to steal the right paintings. I might as well have sent blind newts! Next time I shall go myself in my beautiful submarine and personally attend to the details. Have you seen my lovely Cala-Mary? Your parents are making a masterpiece for me. They are nearly finished—in both senses of the word. For, of course, it would be foolish of me to allow them to live once they have served my purpose. They know a little more than is convenient.”

His tone was cool and amused, as if the idea of murdering Leonora and Alberto Stampara was something to be done in a lighthearted manner. Teo felt her old contempt for him flooding back undiluted. She shouted unheard, “You give villains a bad name! At least you should be passionate! You have done every bad thing that a coward can do, and nothing a brave man would.”

Bajamonte Tiepolo shook his head as if there were something in his ear.

“I cannot hear you, Undrowned Child, yet I sense your impotent anger. I feel you looking at my plans for a flood in London.”

“So it is another flood,” thought Teo. “Of course. Bajamonte Tiepolo loves floods. Much better than a battle! Lots of death for innocent people and perfect safety for himself.”

Into her mind flowed images of the graceful Houses of Parliament, the spires of Westminster Abbey, the beautiful dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral and even the gilded wind vanes of Billingsgate Fish Market. There followed the grimy, hopeful faces of the Mansion Dolorous gang, and those of the busy Londoners rushing to their important appointments.

Bajamonte Tiepolo wanted to destroy all these places, all these people. Teo pictured stones and humans tumbling through another great ice flood, the destruction and the silent, tragic aftermath, just as she had seen in Venice.

“So.” He pointed to the map, by now nearly covered in blue wash. “A London full to bursting with mourners is inundated by a wall of water that quickly turns to ice: the same treatment that worked so capitally in Venice. And while they are all a-drowning, I’ll be safely in the Cala-Mary on a brief art-history excursion. No one shall stop me. They’ll be too busy trying not to die.

“I can almost smell your indignation, Undrowned Child. It has no power, however, except to amuse me, which it does.” He laughed dryly. Then he pointed to the empty spaces on the walls. “Dry and snug inside the Cala-Mary, I’ll be helping myself to the paintings of Venice that shall complete my collection of doomed art.”

“Doomed art?” fumed Teo.

“Doomed, you’re no doubt asking? Yes, for when I have every last Venetian picture in my possession, there will be such a blaze aboard this ship! The image of Venice shall be effaced from the world forever. Elaborate fireworks and a glorious firestorm … Oh, you wonder what shall happen to all the creatures presently at work on the treadmills? And my other slaves, your parents? I understand that children and scientists burn quite well, particularly when they’re somewhat dehydrated from short rations and long hours of work.”

Teo gripped one hand in another, trying to calm herself.

“So much death, you ask? You’ll be whimpering, why must millions of Londoners and animals and visiting dignitaries lose their lives now? What of it? I personally might have let Queen Victoria’s funeral pass unmolested—it’s nothing to me—but I needed to placate my friend from the island of Hooroo, who has promised to be so very … useful … to his dear Signor Pipistrelly, as he likes to call me. Indeed, the subjugation of London was a condition of his cooperation. And why shouldn’t Harold Hoskins be king of the few survivors if he wants? He has a family tree that shows that he has every right to the British throne.

“Yes, I can hear you—almost—protesting that there is the small technicality that the old Queen’s son Albert Edward has already been sworn in as king. But”—and Il Traditore laughed again—“Bertie was never a very strong swimmer. And he’ll be riding a short-legged horse for the funeral. Poor King Bertie.

“At the last minute, of course, Harold Hoskins shall be unable to attend the funeral—a slight attack of the royal family’s malady will keep him in bed, resting. In his apartments at Kenwood House high on Hampstead Heath; very high up, as it happens.

“It grows even more beautiful, our plot. For as soon as London is drowned, I shall freeze over the English Channel. Our army of ghosts, escaped prisoners and pardoned criminals will simply step straight across from France. Any Londoners who survive the flood will be weak with the Half-Dead disease. Our soldiers will make short work of anyone who resists.

“And Harold Hoskins—the only member of the royal family to survive the flood—will have been granted his heart’s desire, assuming he has a heart, of course!” Il Traditore sniggered. “And then King Harold will repay me by turning his attention on Venice! My cormorants tell me that the frozen pathway from the mainland to Venice is almost solid now and, if a few men sink through the soft ice, there are plenty more where they came from.…”

For the first time, Teo thought of herself. “How am I going to get away to tell Renzo and the others? He’ll be calling for his Ghost-Convicts any second. They can see me between-the-Linings, even if he can’t.”

Yet again, Bajamonte Tiepolo followed her thoughts with uncanny accuracy. He called out, “Get in here!” and the crunch of skeletal ghost-feet could be heard at the far end of the corridor.

He turned to Teo. “Planning to run to the Studious Son with this story? A little late for that, I fear. Farewell, Undrowned Child. Even if you evade my henchmen, the Thames may not prove as easy a path as you might wish. Vampire Eels do not thrive at this latitude, so I’ve recruited some sanguivorous new friends from the South Pacific. Vampyroteuthis infernalis has proved a most happy addition to the wildlife of this estuary. At least, they’re happy. The London creatures have suffered somewhat. Particularly the wretched Melusine and Sea-Bishops. And a few worthless children. As will anyone who gets in the way of my new friends, especially anyone planning to tell tales and alert my victims to what is about to befall them.”

“Vampyr …” Teo tried to consult the pages of Lagoon Creatures—Nice or Nasty? by Professor Marìn, but Bajamonte Tiepolo continued triumphantly.

“In Venice, it was not possible to drown the accursed Undrowned Child, but in London I’m free of that old Venetian Prophecy. Anyway, you’ll be dying long before you drown.”

He lifted a coil of leather tubing and whispered into it. Teo’s eyes traced the tube down through a hole beneath his desk. From the echoey noise that came back, it seemed that the far end of the tube lay in the water below the boat. And an excited chittering now filled the air. Bajamonte Tiepolo resumed humming to himself and filling in the very last inch of white on his map with blue paint.

Numbed, Teo backed out of the room and pounded up to the deck. The two Ghost-Convicts who were arriving had time only to shout “The girlie!” before she slid between them. For the first time, she noticed wires and sticks of dynamite fastened at intervals to the spaces above the doors. The whole Bombazine was nothing more than a bomb, ready primed: as soon as her slaves had served their master, she would be destroyed along with all the Venetian art—and children—aboard.

“Oh no!” Teo’s coracle had been set adrift and floated an impossible half-mile down the river. Examining the rope, she saw that it had been gnawed off in the water. Behind her came the sound of Ghost-Convicts clanking rapidly in her direction. One shouted, “There she is!”

Teo gulped in a huge breath and dived back into the Thames. She swam away from the Bombazine as fast as she knew how.

Almost immediately, she found out exactly what Bajamonte Tiepolo meant by “my new friends.”

Teo was not twenty yards from the boat when she felt her arms brushed by something soft and flabby. Putting her head under the water, she realized that she was surrounded by unblinking pale blue eyes. Those eyes belonged to brown squid. Each squid was only about one foot long, yet there were thousands of them. A wall of squid blocked every way she looked.

Then she felt something prod her left leg. It tickled. And at that same moment Teo finally found the page stored in her memory. Professor Marìn had written, “Vampyroteuthis infernalis, Vampire Squid, rarely seen and harmless to man unless modified by baddened magic.”

She put on a burst of speed that churned the water. A moment later, tentacles were exploring her arms and legs again.

“Il Traditore is right. If they kill me,” Teo groaned, “I won’t be able to warn anyone about exactly what he’s planning for London. The new ice flood. The Hooroo Ghost-Convicts …”

A tentacle surged out of the water and slapped her across the chin.

All thought vanished from her mind except one: excruciating pain. Agony surged through her face, legs and arms, as if someone was shooting a poison arrow through her blood. Her tongue immediately swelled to fill her mouth. Teo screamed, but no noise came out.

“Now,” she thought desperately, “I know what killed the Melusine and the Sea-Bishops.” Even as she choked, Teo was buffeted by the wake of a passing fishing vessel. Its captain and crew were evidently frustrated by something caught in their nets.

“Oh ’eck, it’s a dead seal, of all the rotten luck!” shouted one of the fishermen. “Get that peskiferous corpse rid!”

“What’s a seal doing in the Thames? Thought they lived in the snowy wastes.”

“Cold enough for it,” said his shivering companion. “Hain’t you noticed what’s happening here? Thought all them white floaters was just ice cubes escaped from the champagne cooler of some fancy restaurant, did you?”

A lantern caught a gutting knife being pulled from a leather holster. Again and again it hacked at the tangled nets. Teo struggled to shout to the fishermen, but she was gagging on her swollen tongue. Anyway, she was between-the-Linings—they wouldn’t hear her, or see her frantic waving in the dark water just outside the small pool of light cast by their lantern.

“Never seen so much blood!” complained the first fisherman, wiping his hand on his trousers. “There we go!”

The limp body of the seal floated free. The boat sped off. Teo looked away, forgetting her own pain for a second.

And indeed the pain ebbed. For the squid, smelling the seal’s blood diffusing through the water, quickly detached their tentacles from Teo’s thin arms and swam greedily toward the corpse.

“A corpse, that’s what Bajamonte Tiepolo thinks I am,” Teo thought. “He will be sure his beastly Vampire Squid have killed me too. That is my one advantage now.”

Sensation was returning to her tongue, and she could feel its swollen cushion gradually lessening to normal proportions.

She tested it by speaking aloud. “I muth go weth. Newgate ith near the Weth End.”

With an eye on the moon, she turned and swam west as quietly and quickly as she could. Crusts of ice reached into the river. Floes nudged her on either side.

“Speed will keep me warm,” she thought. “Keep me alive, at least.”

London’s stately buildings, faintly illuminated, reared on either side of her as she made her lonely progress. They seemed to bend over her with tender concern.

As she dogpaddled, her mind dipped in and out of a thousand thoughts, each blacker than the last: the Bombazine, her cruel cargo, the ice generator, the Cala-Mary, Renzo languishing in filthy straw, but, worst of all, how she had felt in the presence of Il Traditore, hearing his hated voice, listening to his evil plans, and knowing that this city, full of people she loved, was now doomed, just like Venice.

A London depleted by a million citizens—all drowned by Bajamonte Tiepolo—could put up only a feeble defense when the enemy soldiers—supernatural and criminal—came pouring in over the frozen English Channel.

A tall black obelisk loomed, its unlikely silhouette jolting her thoughts. Cleopatra’s Needle! She called up her Appleyard and Hetling map for consultation. Sure enough, Newgate Prison was almost due east of the obelisk on the Embankment.

Using Cleopatra’s Needle as her compass, Teo swam toward the shore. Dawn was breaking. Dirty streaks of light showed her empty streets.

She ran barefoot in her wet clothes to Newgate, pausing only when she caught sight of her own shocked face in a shop window. As soon as she stopped running, she felt a burning like acid on her skin. The stings from the Vampire Squid had raised weals all over her face, legs and arms. Her teeth were chattering, but her tongue was now back to its own size. She galloped on, all the way to Newgate, where she shadowed a guard opening the gates for the early-morning coal delivery. She retraced her steps all the way to Renzo’s cell.

“Renzo!” she cried. “Il Traditore …”

The words died on her lips. Renzo’s cell was empty; a few parrot feathers eddied across the floor like autumn leaves.

“Preparations for the funeral are all in order, dear Bertie?” the Pretender asked the new King of England over their after-supper brandies.

“Well, it’s all in the hands of the best people,” said Bertie defensively. “What could possibly go wrong?”

“Couldn’t possibly think …,” hummed the Pretender. “I mean, I can’t imagine. How many people are expected to turn out?”

“Thousands upon thousands,” replied the King. “Everyone wants to be a part of it. And we’ll be putting on a jolly fine show. Superb, in fact. The streets will be thick with all our armed services. Every square inch of London will be covered with mourners and military. Touching, isn’t it? All those nice people gathered in the hope of a glimpse of poor Mama.”