Agamemnon Frost and the Crown of Towers (3 page)

Frost’s fingers moved over the curve of copper he still held. “Nestor is aware of the situation. Troop sleds are arrowing in now.”

Light flashed over a heavy metal door, the thick black edge revealing it wasn’t shut tight. Calchas’s approach was slow and cautious, his footsteps almost silent, his breath held.

“He should fall back, wait for his men. You don’t know for certain that everyone was
koile.
There could be a household of automata and
kardax
behind that door.” Mason’s gut tightened, but they couldn’t communicate with the men now, having to maintain silence or give away to the enemy that their agent stood outside.

Calchas reached into his top pocket and pulled out the slim length of the
ektaxis.
He pushed it towards the sliver of a gap. The image on the screen sharpened, and information streamed along the bottom of his particular screen.

“Good man,” Frost murmured, his fingertips working across his curve of controlling copper. “I have it.”

The room beyond was unlit. Mason could still see the curve of the brick ceiling and stone-slabbed cold tables, the tables empty of food and pushed to one side. In the centre a great grey cylinder almost filled the width of the room.

“The symbols there are pointing to traces of meat, ham, pork—probably from the cold tables—paper and scraps of muslin, and the smears of soil brought in by the groundsmen. Nothing else.” Frost swore softly. “Could that be of
koile
construction?”

The cylinder did have the almost-stippling pattern that bore an uncomfortable resemblance to stretched skin. “What would they push into its place?”

“Movement.”

Mason froze, held his breath, but eased it out as the knowledge that whoever was in the cellar room couldn’t see him. He caught the flicker of something to the right of the cylinder. Was this the start of a true object occupying the space made by the
koile?
They had foiled Pandarus’s previous attempt to bring in shipfuls of reinforcements. Was he trying here? But the cylinder was nothing like the network of tunnels that had made up the hollow ships.

He pulled his attention back to the scenes the agents’ devices still poured against the steel screen. The walls were stone and brick, not the reconstructed stone flesh Pandarus made from living people.

“Menelaus.”

Frost’s half-disbelieving whisper burned through Mason. A man now stood before the cylinder, immaculate in his grey travelling suit. He bore a likeness to Frost, with his strong features, perfectly carved though to a different design, smooth dark hair and that athletic and aristocratic bearing that screamed wealth and power. But there was a sharp difference. Menelaus held himself with a confidence that came from knowing his body was practically indestructible. Something Frost never gave away.

“
Agamemnon.
” Menelaus’s voice was deeper than Frost’s, with a rasp that scoured Mason’s skin. His mouth tightened. “
You and your pet betrayed our master.
Destroyed his work.
And such betrayal deserves just punishment.
”

Mason frowned. Frost’s whisper had not reached beyond the cellar in which they stood. “Does he think you’re at Dyrford? Frost?”

But the man was frozen, his gaze fixed on his brother.

“Frost! This situation. It feels wrong.” Mason swore, catching his fingers in his hair. His gut was a tight knot, his heart a drum. Everything in him, every old and newly heightened instinct, said disaster awaited them. “Get them out. Get the men out now. It’s a trap!”

3. The Quest for Clues

Frost’s fingers burst into movement. “Calchas. Everyone. Get out of there now!”

The image tumbled as Calchas dropped the device. Light flashed, stark white and raw. A blast of sound ripped through Mason’s skull, and he staggered, his senses stripped back, his hands useless as they clamped to his ears.

The steel screen died. Dull grey metal and silence filled the laboratory. Mason shook his head, the ringing of the explosion still ricocheting within his skull.

Frost turned to the bench and found his own
ektaxis
. “Nestor—”

“
They destroyed the house.
What the hell happened in there
,
Achilles?
” Their commander’s voice bore his fury. Around him, brought to them via the device Frost held, men shouted and the clack and clank of machinery cut the air. “
Was it a deliberate act?
”

“It was meant for me, for us, for Mason and myself.” For a long moment, Frost closed his eyes. Mason ached to press a hand to his shoulder, to offer support. His own brother had tried to kill him. But he couldn’t give comfort, not with Nestor’s hard eyes watching.

Frost straightened and the muscles in his jaw grew tight. “I need to review the final frames captured by the
ektaxis
. Achilles out.” He leaned forward, his fingers digging into the thick wood of the bench. His head dropped. “I know I’m in their sights. It’s been that way for years. But Station X skirted around their plans, and for all of my bravado, we were never that much of a threat. Never.”

Mason finally placed his hand on his shoulder and Frost stilled.

A moment later, Frost’s muscles relaxed and he released a sigh. “We could reconstruct their technology, follow some of their codes, but the successes we’ve had with stopping them this year... It had never been that way. Now we’re a real threat.”

“You know what’s coming.” The future Mason had lived, breathed, touched still haunted him. Land blasted and empty, with humanity little more than a grey skin stretched around the earth. “We have to stop them.”

“We do, but will this be a Pyrrhic victory? Station X lost four good men. Will we have anything, anyone left?” Frost pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and stood away from the bench. Mason’s hand fell to his side. “But it seems we have little choice.” He frowned. “Prepare the house for Nestor’s men. I want a battalion here.”

“Frost...”

Frost lifted his chin, and the light in his eyes was all too familiar. The heart of a soldier shone from him. “The shield goes up now. We will fortify this house.”

“What do you need?”

“A way to travel back in time and put a bullet in Pandarus’s brain.” Frost dragged his hands down his face and let out a slow groan. “Solitude, Mason. Peace. Simply me and the last framed moments from the cellar
.
”

Had Menelaus taken his own life? Had that been an order from his master, to sacrifice himself to try to kill his brother? Pandarus liked to dig in and wrench the knife. Had he wanted Frost to witness Menelaus’s death?

“I don’t know.” Frost’s mouth pulled into a wry smile. “You’re
still
not used to me reading you so easily.”

Mason winced. “No.”

“I don’t know how much time we have.” He glanced at the sheet of dead metal on the wall, his expression almost blank. “Though what little we do have, they—those four men—gave us.”

Frost was in shock. Mason had seen it before, a sudden burst of violence and death that caught one’s mind, numbed and buckled it. Frost had experienced worse, but this was his brother, his only family. The knowledge that Menelaus’s true self had been trapped in his body, caught there by Pandarus’s foul technology, had to be working through Frost’s brain. If Menelaus were dead, the agony that he had killed his brother as he killed himself would have been torture.

“Go, Mason.” Another smile touched Frost’s mouth, not quite reaching his eyes. “Begin to secure their billet. The quartermaster will have his supplies and men ready. He simply needs somewhere to deposit them.”

“Menelaus is alive.” The assurance burst from Mason and he straightened his shoulders, willing the tight wince from his face.

Frost frowned. “You don’t have to...” He paused. “Can you feel it? I’ve come to rely on these instincts of yours.”

Mason stared at the flagstone floor, fighting to clear his mind, to empty it and let the strange swell of his instincts rise. They’d always been sharp. With his transfiguration, they now bordered on the unnatural.

The ringing of his ears, the fierce white blast, exploded again in his thoughts. Something was...off. Distorted. A doubt he couldn’t name. He reached out to steady himself against the workbench, and found Frost’s hand gripping his shoulder.

Frost. Frost would find it now. Nothing escaped the brilliance of his mind. “There’s...something.” Mason glanced up, finding Frost closer than he expected. It caught his breath for a moment. “You’ll find it.”

“Your faith in me...”

The man’s voice was soft, warmed with an emotion Mason didn’t want to name either. Not then, as the need to close the short distance and find the perfection of Frost’s mouth was a hard ache in his gut. Denying that need, he stepped back, hating the way Frost’s fingers broke free.

“Work.” Frost turned sharply and found the device that activated the screen. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Everything from the four
ektaxis
was recorded.”

“I’ll return.” Mason found himself backing away, his finger pointing to the metal doors behind him. The want and unease was a hated mix within him now. He didn’t know how to behave around Frost, and it was about to worsen as a horde of soldiers and technicians descended on the Hall again. “Soon.”

“Good. I still need you.”

The quiet words cut into Mason’s chest, biting deeper than a bullet. Frost hadn’t looked away from the copper panel his fingers moved over, but the muscle still jumping in his jaw was stark, telling.

“Understood.” Mason had nothing else to say. Not without pulling the twisted mess filling his mind out into the open...and he wasn’t prepared for that. They had more important matters to concern them. The heavy clang of the metal door closing over on Frost’s laboratory and the darkness in which he now stood let him close his eyes for one brief moment.

He was a soldier again. And as Frost reminded him more than once, they had to do their duty. It was a pity that the new skin he wore wasn’t as tough and deadened as the one that had seen him through ten years of the British army.

* * *

Just before luncheon, Mason stood again outside Frost’s laboratory. Nestor’s men had arrived, a full Station X artillery battery. Thirty men and two
aeolipile
gun carriages. Bunks filled one of the long cellars, and the Greenbank staff had shifted into working with the battery’s quartermaster and cook sergeant to settle the men and feed them.

Mason could hear them, a scuffle of wooden bed frames and iron-studded boots over a flagstone floor, mixed with the murmur of voices. Thankfully, there were too many thick cellar walls between him and the men to catch their conversations. He had little doubt it would concern his or Frost’s transfiguration.

Mason had witnessed the anxious looks when directing a technician into the Hall. The younger man had stood stock-still, his gaze a little too white at the edges and fixed hard on Mason’s chest. Mason had urged him on. A flinch, an obvious nervous swallow, and the technician had stammered his apologies, his face flushing, before he scurried after his fellow artillery men.

Mason put it from his mind. Had to. It was what it was.
How
it was. His knuckles rapped against the metal of the laboratory door, the sound hollow and echoing.

Frost jerked the door open and Mason rocked back, surprised at the suddenness.

“There you are.” Frost dragged the metal door over the flagstones, the scrape of metal cutting across Mason’s nerves. “I believe I have...something.” A line creased his forehead. “Possibly.” He waved his arm. “Inside.”

The dry static of the air moved across Mason’s skin and he held down a shiver. “Nestor sent you thirty men and two guns.”

“Good,” Frost murmured. “My staff also have
pelekys
energy weapons training, and the Hall shield is at full power. We’re secure as we can be.” Frost dimmed the milky blue of the sconces, the rich scent of the sea fading back and the metallic burn of the screen itching at Mason’s senses. “And you were right. I found something.”

Frozen flat against the large screen was a single shot of the cold room. It had an almost luminous quality and was sharper than any photograph Mason had ever seen, not that he had seen one several feet wide before. At the bottom of the screen, the complicated patterns stood out.

Frost’s brother was half obscured by the wide grey cylinder, caught midstride, his face bleak, his arm swung out with a white-knuckled fist. His clothes were as fine as anything Frost would wear, impeccably tailored and pressed. The similarity between the brothers was stark, a perfection to their features that seemed more carved than true life. Had they carried such perfection before their transfiguration?

There was nothing else in the room, simply a set of empty tables with the ragged remains of muslin littering their scrubbed surfaces. Yet...Mason’s instincts kicked in as they had when he’d assured Frost his brother was alive.

Mason stretched out his hand, his fingers hovering over the heated metal, the charge of static pricking his fingertips. “Something is there. I don’t know...”

The clank and hiss of the device Frost held caused Mason to blink. In that moment, the image faded and refocused, drawing closer to Menelaus. A faint shadow across the short lapel of his coat appeared strange. There was no light cast in the room.

“It’s a smear of dirt. The thoughtless wipe of a thumb. Though not his.” Frost drew the focus in again to the material. “And not the same as the mud that stained the floor. That was well-manured topsoil.” He ran his finger along the confusion of numbers labelling the bottom of the screen. “No, this was radically different. Specific traces of oil, sand, smoke, sulphur dioxide.”

“Somewhere industrial.”

Frost lifted an eyebrow and Mason stared at him.

“He’s
here?
”

The device clanked again, coloured light chasing through the dials and over the copper. Another flat image of the cold room appeared, Menelaus standing stern before the cylinder. Dark eyes with an inner burn of light seemed to flicker, and the movement forced Mason’s heart to drum. What was happening?

He caught the movement of Frost’s hands. The image was rolling slowly forward through time. A brilliant flare of white light surged up from the floor, almost obscuring Menelaus. Almost...but not quite. Yet his image seemed to dissolve, independent of the growing surge of the explosion.

“He stepped back. Into the cylinder.”

“He’s alive.” With a flick of his fingers, Frost dulled the metal screen and the charge in the air died with it. Soft blue light grew, and the scent of the ocean eased into Mason’s lungs. “The cylinder had to be
koile
, formed to move him—them—from one place to another.”

“And he’s here.”

“He’s here. Somewhere in the city.” Frost dropped the metal device back onto the cluttered bench. “Menelaus has come home.”

“The Crown of Towers could be in play.” Mason ran a hand over his hair. “And we’ve—you’ve—made no headway in understanding what it is.”

Frost rubbed at his jaw. “No. It’s a pattern I can’t see.” He swore softly under his breath. “Ask Mrs. Forsythe to bring Theodora to the library when she’s finished her lunch.”

“Frost...” He couldn’t expose her to Pandarus’s scheming; he’d said as much to their commander. Her mind was fragile.

Frost’s smile was bleak. “Our time’s running out. We have no choice. It’s her soul, or all our futures.”