Of Silk and Steam (13 page)

All these fucking years, protecting the bastard from the world, protecting Caine’s own bloody secrets.
Don’t you dare do this to me. I supported you. I stood by you for years, no matter what you did to me. You…you were the only father I knew.

The duke’s gaze dropped. And there was Leo’s answer. Incredulousness filled him, the final blow to send him reeling.

Slowly, Caine reached out and flipped open the file. “What are these?”

Over. It was all over.
Leo couldn’t breathe.

The prince consort leaned on the back of his chair, his fingers digging into it as he gave Leo a vicious smile. “Photographs, Your Grace, of your wife’s bastard’s half brother in the rookeries. Indeed, it explains a great deal about Barrons’s dabbling in matters that didn’t concern him.” Blade’s duel with Vickers flashed to mind. “My man has been digging. Turns out the boy’s name is Charlie Todd, son of the late Sir Artemus Todd, over whom you once held patronage.” The prince consort’s voice turned soft, as if in sympathy.

“Barrons had to know the truth. There’s no other reason for him to visit the rookeries so often, and he did take in the boy’s older sister, Miss Lena Todd, last year. Gave her a debut, in fact. Why else, if not to give his sister a chance? I’m so terribly, terribly sorry to reveal the truth of your wife’s betrayal in such a manner, but I cannot allow her bastard to interrupt my court anymore.”

Everyone’s eyes were on Leo. The aging Duke of Morioch actually laughed under his breath, the sound cutting through Leo like a knife.

Caine slowly closed the file. “I see. And what do you intend to do with the boy?”

“I would see him named rogue—”

Destroyed. His entire reputation and all he’d worked for shattered. But worse than that, worse than everything…his father wouldn’t even look at him.

“—except he has not only taken the benefits of the craving virus illegally, but he has lied to the court. To you and me, to all of us. And his allegiance has been made clear over the years in the way he’s perverted justice by seeing the Devil of Whitechapel freed after his duel and—”

“During the incident with me and Mercury?” A new voice spoke up. Lynch. “I do recall Barrons standing in support of myself when you would have left me on the executioner’s block.” A brief smile. “Erroneously, of course.” Slowly he let his gaze run across all of the Council members, including the very silent Lady Aramina. “In fact I rather recall Barrons standing in defense of several that sit here today.”

“Perhaps I should revisit the judgment of that action too,” the prince consort spat.

“In the wake of Goethe’s sudden disappearance, that would leave us down…three councilors, would it not? How…inconvenient.” Lynch barely blinked.

Movement shifted at the table as each duke tried not to look at any of the others. Lynch’s words were a reminder that those who had stood against the prince consort in the past were slowly being whittled away.

“Only two,” the prince consort replied after a long, drawn-out moment. “Caine holds his seat—Barrons only held his vote during his…incapacitation.”

Leo finally managed to look along the table to the person sitting at the very end in her creamy skirts and pearl-net bodice. His mind went white-hot with betrayal.

The photographs loomed in front of her. Aramina stared at them, her face dead-pale. As if feeling the weight of his gaze, she slowly looked up and flinched.

Barrons let out a soft exhale of a laugh. The one time he’d misjudged someone so completely… “You treacherous bitch,” he whispered under his breath, knowing that she heard him.

“Judgment, my prince?” Morioch called.

“Let us not be hasty,” Caine retorted, drumming his fingers in a slow, controlled pattern on the table.

“You would have to put it to a vote,” Lynch pointed out. “And you know what mine will be.”

“As mine,” Malloryn added.

Auvry, damn him.
Leo let out a harsh breath. Their differences over the past year had torn them apart, but they’d once been friends. He wasn’t alone here. Their votes wouldn’t be enough to save him—Lynch and Auvry couldn’t turn the tide of the Council—but it was a welcome balm for the ache in his chest that cleaved him in two.

The prince consort leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped over his middle. “No, no, I don’t think we’ll put it to a vote. I think we’ll let the queen decide.”

Only she could overrule the entire Council, though she did so rarely.

Lynch let out a breath. “Very well. Exile? Banishment? What shall we—”

“Execution,” the prince consort breathed into the room.

Leo’s head jerked up.
What?

“What do you say, my love?” The prince consort slid his hand over his wife’s, where it rested on the table. “For the sin of lying about his birth, he could be absolved, but I fear his intentions go far deeper than that. He has moved against us, plotted for years to commit treason—”

“Treason?” Lynch demanded in shock.

“And your proof?” For the first time Barrons found his voice—and his feet. There was no way he was going to let the bastard pin this on him.

“The Devil of Whitechapel—”

“Sir Henry?” he countered. “Whom the queen knighted herself? How was aiding him during that duel treason?”

“For the simple reason that he’s plotting to overthrow me. He’s been stockpiling weapons in the rookery for months. Far more than are needed to defend that hellhole, and you’ve been meeting with him regularly. Or do you deny it?”

Deny something that was, in essence, the truth? For in a way, they
had
been preparing to commit treason.

“Your very silence condemns you.” The prince consort gestured to the pair of Coldrush Guards. “Arrest him.” He looked down at his wife. “On my lady’s command.”

The queen stared blankly at the table in front of her. Everyone’s breath caught. She wasn’t always obedient, but something about the vacant way she stared raised the hackles down Leo’s spine. The prince consort had done something to her. Hurt her or threatened her after the incident the other day.

The queen jerked her head in a nod. “Y-yes.”

No.

“Send him to the Tower to be executed.” The prince consort’s smile spread, and he caressed his wife’s face, ignoring her flinch. “I want his head mounted on the walls.”

Executed.

Hands caught him roughly by the arms and forced him to his knees. The room was in an uproar, dukes calling out across the table, but he could only see two faces. His father, his mouth slightly open as if in shock, the only one still seated; and the duchess, curse her blood, as she circled the table, going to the queen’s side.

The room went dark as his hunger rose. He could feel his rage building. Not like this. The prince consort had outplayed him—and well. Must have been eyes on the rookery. Eyes on him. Of course. He should have guessed it. The prince consort wanted to regain control of the Council, and now he was making his move against all those that threatened it.

“You said in your message that he would be spared,” the Duke of Caine called, looking up at his prince, his ally. “If I didn’t deny it.”

The prince consort didn’t even bother to look at him, too busy gloating as he smiled at Leo. “I changed my mind.”

The world went black for just a second. For the first time in his life, Leo let his demons rule him, and it was as if the world suddenly shot into vital blood-soaked clarity.

Both guards went down beneath his hand and then he snatched at acres of silk, drawing Mina back against his chest and bringing his blood-letting knife up against her throat.

The room froze. Mina sucked in a breath, her heart thumping in her chest. He could feel it all the way through her slim back.

“Kill him,” the prince consort snarled.

“No!” the queen screamed, on her feet at last, the dead look fading from her expression. “He’ll hurt her.”

“She’ll heal.”

“Not from this,” Leo promised, taking a step back to keep them all in view, but the instant he said it, the red haze washed from his vision.
No. Not her
, the darkness in him whispered.

He let out a breath. Couldn’t let them see it.

“Don’t follow us,” he snapped, stepping back against the heavy brass doors, dragging the duchess with him. “Or I swear to the blood that I’ll kill her.”

“What are you doing?” Mina staggered down the stairs, ruthlessly hauled by Barrons. “Where are you taking me?”

She couldn’t catch her breath. All she could see were those damning photographs—the same ones Gow had given her the other night. But she’d burned them. How the devil had the prince consort gotten his hands on them and worked out what she had?

Gow.
He’d been in her household for years as one of the few she could rely on to get the information she needed. So bland and unassuming, never asking for anything more than he was owed.

The Falcons were not only assassins but also spies. It wasn’t beyond belief to imagine that the prince consort would try to infiltrate all of their houses. Indeed, she often vetted prospective employees
very
carefully. But what if the spy had already been there, trusted under her father, inherited by her? She hadn’t queried the employees she already had.

But Gow as the spy made too much sense not to be true.

She’d done this. Cast Barrons to the lions as carelessly as if she’d done it deliberately, and from the harsh look in his eyes, he’d never forgive her.

Barrons hauled her to the side of the spiral staircase that circled the center of the Ivory Tower and peered over the rail. “Damn it,” he muttered under his breath, shooting a look above them. From the sound of voices and tramping feet, at least a dozen Coldrush Guards were swarming down on them from above, and more were heading up from below. A bell rang somewhere, pealing out its warning.

He was trapped here.

Or was he? There was a rushing sound in her ears as she stared at the hard line of his jaw and that jaunty ruby that hung from his ear. She could get him out. If she dared.

Sacrifices
must
be
made
, the queen’s voice whispered in her head.
For
the
greater
good.

Not
this. Not him.
Biting her lip, Mina refused to examine the unsettling sensation burning in her chest. She owed Barrons a debt for his actions the other night with the Falcons—and so did the queen. It was as simple as that.

Grabbing his sleeve, she gestured downward. It was like trying to haul a statue with her bare hands. “I know another way out…one that very few people know about.”

“Why the hell wouldn’t I think it a trap?”

“Because if you’re cornered, I can’t predict what you’ll do to me,” she shot back, staring into those dark eyes and willing him to see that she spoke the truth. “And I never wanted…this.”

For a moment his expression tightened, not anger or fury but grief. And she felt again how she had in that moment the prince consort had dropped his devastating words into the room—when Barrons had looked up, just once, and known that everything he’d fought for was lost.

Heart twisting, her grip softened on his sleeve.

“I made a mistake,” she whispered. “This is my fault. Please, let me undo some of the damage.”

And he wanted to believe her. She could see the yearning in his expression, that of a man with no other allies in this moment and who desperately wanted one. Then his face hardened. “If you betray me again, I promise I will destroy you before they kill me. Do you understand?”

Somehow she nodded, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat.

“Then show me how to get out of here.”

* * *

There was nowhere to go. All of his properties would be compromised, including those that belonged to the families of his friends and thralls.

Nowhere to go… Or perhaps only one place the prince consort wouldn’t dare follow him.

Whitechapel.

The secret tunnel spilled them out at the base of Crowe Tower. One of the four smaller towers that circled the Ivory Tower, Crowe Tower was so named for the flock of ravens that circled its peak.

Peering around the edge of a stone gateway, Leo saw dozens of Coldrush Guards streaming into the Ivory Tower. Nobody had seen him and the duchess vanish into one of the smaller sitting rooms with a mirror hiding a secret passage he’d never known existed.

“Let me go,” the duchess whispered. “I swear I won’t sound the alarm.”

He dragged her forward into the shadows of the royal stables. “Your word lost its value for me half an hour ago. Besides, I might still need a hostage.”

Brandy-brown eyes raked the walls and the main gates that led to the tower. “If you were by yourself, you could scale the walls. I can’t. Not in this.” A gesture to her full, creamy skirts. Finally she gave him a look filled with defiance. “And I wouldn’t, either.”

Scaling the walls would leave him with his hands too full to carry her. “It’s a good thing we’re not going over the walls then.”

Capturing her wrist, he dragged her inside the stables. A long, low hall, it was filled with the gleam of copper and the muted silence of a place that held nothing living.

“You’re mad,” the duchess said, guessing what he planned to do.

“Not yet.”

Nobody had bothered to shut the main gates, no doubt presuming he wouldn’t make it out of the Tower. Half a dozen Coldrush Guards were guarding the gates, armed with pikes and the electric stunners used to bring a blue blood down.

They weren’t, however, watching the stables.

Dragging the duchess up in front of him, Barrons set the boilers on the massive Trojan horse he’d chosen to a low hum. Hundreds of the horses stood in silent rows within the stables, their copper-plated hides gleaming. They stood eight foot tall at the withers, their enormous soup-plate hooves shod with hard steel.

“Have you ever ridden one of these things?” the duchess hissed, clinging to the arm he’d wrapped tightly around her waist.

“Once,” he replied, sliding his legs into the pressure grooves on the plated saddle. The steam horse stepped forward a step in response to the pressure from his thighs.

Most commonly controlled by the small radio frequency their handlers used, they could also be ridden. Each squeeze of his thighs compressed the pressure plates until the copper destrier danced sideways out of its row. Steam snorted from its nostrils as Barrons gathered up the reins. The boiler was almost at full capacity, heat burning between his legs.

“
Once?
”

“I was curious. Are you ready?”

“No! Barrons, don’t do this. I need to be
here
. You don’t understand what you’re doing. I’ve helped you so far—”

Another squeeze with his thighs and the horse reared up on its powerful hind legs, dancing forward a step.
Hmm. Not so hard then.
The duchess shrieked, her hand clutching at his sleeve. Then he leaned forward, releasing the reins, and the creature leaped into a thunderous, lurching gallop.

The Coldrush Guards barely had time to turn before he was upon them, the Trojan horse smashing through their ranks and leaving screams behind. A horn sounded the alarm but they were through the gates, galloping out onto the thoroughfare beside the Thames. People saw the beast and screamed, darting out of the way.

“The cavalry!” someone bellowed. “They’re unleashing the cavalry!”

Then it was mayhem as everyone sought to get out of the way.

He’d not planned for this. Even here, in the heart of the city, the crowd was terrified of the enormous metal beast—and what it usually signified. When the cavalry were unleashed, the prince consort didn’t care if not everyone they crushed were rioting against him. Coaches jerked into side streets and a cart crashed into the back of an omnibus as the driver swore, the whites of his eyes gleaming as he tried to drag his vehicle out of the way of what he presumed would be death.

The rope on the man’s cart snapped and half a dozen wine barrels crashed onto the cobbles, two of them smashing in a spill of claret and the other four rolling directly in front of the mechanical horse.

The duchess screamed, bringing her arm up in front of her eyes.

“Hold on.” Leo leaned forward, trying to work out what move would send the creature into a jump.

“
Barrons!
”

One enormous hoof shattered a cask. The mechanical horse simply plowed through the mess, sending barrel staves and wooden slats tumbling. Leo looked behind him at the remains, then urged the destrier onward.

* * *

Lynch leaned out the window and watched as the streets erupted into mayhem. Dozens of Coldrush Guards poured out of the base of the tower, the streets full of screaming people and mayhem. He didn’t smile. He wanted to, though.

“Do you mean to tell me he’s escaped?” the prince consort screamed behind him at the guard who’d brought the news. “How the hell could he manage to get out of the Tower unseen? And then through the gates before anyone knew of it?”

“I’m n-not entirely certain, your—”

“Lynch!” the prince consort snapped. “I want him found! I want—”

Lynch crossed his arms over his chest as he turned. “You forget, my prince. You yourself said I might no longer be a Nighthawk when I joined the Echelon. This is no task for a duke.”

Their gazes clashed. The prince consort actually bared his teeth, then searched the room, flashing over Malloryn and Caine… Lingering there. “Caine?”

The pale head lifted, those eerie bluish eyes locking on the prince. “This is no task for a duke,” Caine whispered and stared his prince in the eye.

It was the first time he’d ever outright defied his ally. Lynch caught his breath. A broken alliance?

“There’s no need to find him,” Morioch called.

His words stilled the room.

“There’s only one place he can go.” Morioch gave a sinister little smile. “The rookeries, my prince.”

The prince consort traced his fingers over the back of his chair, his face still pale. He wouldn’t look at Caine. “You ask for proof of treason? Let us give Blade a chance to prove his loyalty, then. Morioch, take control of the Coldrush Guards and the metaljacket legions. Tell Blade that he has twelve hours to deliver up Barrons.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Morioch asked, a vicious anticipatory gleam in his eye.

“Then burn him out,” the prince consort snapped, striding for the door. “Burn the rookeries to the ground.”