The Black Rose (9 page)

Alex
did
know about Dark alchemy. He had seen the damage it had wreaked across the worlds he'd visited, including his own. To cave in and use it would make him just as bad as the Cult. “I refuse.”

“That does not make you noble. It makes you weak. You have always been weak. Just as you couldn't stop your father beating your mother to death when you were seven, so you cannot defend yourself now.”

Alex looked at him sharply. “You know nothing about that.”

“On the contrary, I know everything about that. Or what about the casual drug abuse of your early teenage years?”

Alex was breathing heavily again but this time not out of physical pain. His stomach seemed to flip with the return of memories he had fought so hard to suppress.

“Or your friend Connor, so dear to you, who you were unable to protect from something as mundane as a speeding car?”

“Shut up.” The rage swelled, scouring his insides, threatening to spew from his throat with searing venom.

“Or your undisclosed lifestyle choice, kept concealed with such care?”

“Shut up.” He was dimly aware of the breeze beginning to pick up around him.

“Is
that
what you so very much wanted to tell Mister Lawson the night you returned to Earth—?”

“Shut up!”

He felt his control escape into the shadows of his mind. A tornado, laced with indigo darts, exploded outwards from around him in all directions, shattering all the remaining windows. The vaults of the crossing were filled with a tremendous rumbling as the fragments clattered to the marble floor.

Alex collapsed, utterly spent. Amongst the torrent of broken glass, the Emperor smirked. “Now we're getting somewhere.”

Four days after their arrival at the goblin camp, the priest had returned. It was midmorning, and Lucy had been playing with Doch outside Maht's tent: a game of the girl's own invention, which seemed to be something like a cross between hide-and-seek and a doll's tea party but with the players inexplicably transforming into pterodactyl kittens at random intervals.

Adâ had jogged down the path, waving like a madwoman. Though she might not have done exactly the same, Lucy shared her feeling of urgency: she wasn't going to miss out on what they'd been waiting for. She deposited Doch with her mother inside and called a few disconnected words of explanation as she ran off towards the center of the camp.

Sipping from a wooden cup, the priest sat cross-legged to the right of the matriarch, his layers of furs rivaling hers. Like her, he was immensely old.

Lucy joined Adâ, Hakim, and Vince on the floor.

Hakim began to speak, but the priest waved him into silence with a frail hand. “The matriarch has explained your wishes to me. We shall go to the Cave. In fact, we shall leave right away.”

Everyone looked round at him, alarmed, including the matriarch, who evidently saw fit to intervene. “Your Grace, surely your travel has tired you? You must wait a few days and rest—”

With the same rather irritating motion, the priest quieted her. “I am quite well.” He stood, finished his drink, and turned to the Apollonians. “Collect your belongings and meet me at the northern gate.” He nodded to the matriarch and departed.

There was silence as everyone recovered from the abrupt decree.

Then the matriarch spoke again. “It is, of course, the priest's decision to lead you to the Cave, and I cannot impinge on that. However, something is not right with him. You must keep an eye on him whilst you travel and ensure he comes to no harm.”

The four of them nodded and stood to leave.

The smog-studded mist had descended once more as Jack, Sardâr, Bál, and Ruth crept through the lamp-lit streets of Albion. They had waited until past midnight, guaranteeing that the last servants would have departed and that the Osbornes would be immobilized by sleep and several superfluous layers of bedsheets.

For the first time in over a week, the four of them had washed thoroughly. Sardâr had rightly pointed out that if they hoped to remain undetected, trailing grime in and out of the house probably wasn't a good idea. However, the dirt's resilience had been unpleasantly surprising. By the time Jack had finished flaking off soot, the air of the factory and the entire city had seemed to crawl under his skin again. He looked forward to a proper shower aboard
The Golden Turtle.

The corn-yellow moon swooped between chimneys as they approached the Osborne Manor. All the lights appeared to be off and all the curtains drawn.

Ruth led them down a driveway to the left and, withdrawing a thick ring of keys from her belt, unshackled the cast-iron gates. They slipped inside, careful not to let the metal clang, and made their way across the darkened courtyard to the interior door. Ruth repeated the action with a different key, and they were in the house.

Jack peered into the gloom as the door was closed behind him. They were in a servant's utility or laundry room, with folded piles of clothes loaded on shelves around them.

Ruth crept into the next room, and they followed in single file: through the kitchen with its monstrous stone that reminded Jack of the orphanage back on Earth, up spiral steps in the opposite corner of the dining room, past a colossal wooden table to the main hallway. The front door was directly opposite them at the end of a long Oriental rug. Flickering light shimmered through a curtained window, falling on the banisters of the main staircase.

They reached the top, and Ruth was about to set foot on the carpet, but Sardâr held her back. Silently, and without leaving the stairs, he crouched and examined the floor. He muttered a few syllables and passed his hand a few inches above the weaving. A projection of the floor, carpet threads cast in indigo light, rose from its real counterpart and vanished into the air.

“Alchemical alarm now disabled,” Sardâr whispered, straightening and proceeding. They came to the first door on the left and the elf pressed his palm to it, light flashing and receding, to unlock it.

Ruth eased it open, and they entered.

Sardâr raised his arms, and the lamps flickered to life. The drawing room was exactly as Ruth had left it: icicles clinging to the plastered ceiling and hanging off the overstuffed furniture, frost clasping the wallpaper and curtains.

Even under his overcoat, Jack shivered. “Why is it so cold in here?” It was then that he saw what Ruth had described.

Behind the desk, where a portrait might have hung, a slab of ice the size of a fridge was set into the wall. Encased in it, apparently completely frozen, was a girl in what, inexplicably, appeared to be hiking wear.

“She's an elf,” he whispered, noticing the pointed ears and Middle Eastern complexion. “Is she alive?”

“I think so,” Sardâr replied, examining the frosty surface. “Otherwise there would be no point keeping her frozen. But we can deal with her in a minute. First, we should find what the Cult is up to.”

Sardâr made his way to the desk and thumbed through the papers. Ruth joined him, indicating where she'd already looked and pointing out the locked drawers. Jack and Bál hung back, checking the door every few seconds with paranoid glances.

Sardâr beckoned them with a hiss. Jack and Bál almost stumbled over a footstool in their haste to get around the desk. The three others leaned in to see. The elf was holding up what seemed to be blueprints of a machine that reminded Jack of something from an H. G. Wells novel: a large sphere suspended above the ground by thin legs, extruding various spindly limbs—a kind of futuristic hunter spider. The only writing was a monogram printed in the corner.

“What does FGM stand for?”

“Frederick Goodwin Manufacturing,” a voice answered from the doorway.

The four intruders looked up in shock.

Standing at the door, covered in a flowery nightgown and clasping a candelabra, was a middle-aged woman. Her hawkish eyes were fixed on them not with surprise but with something a little too close to hatred.

“Milady!” Ruth exclaimed. “Begging your pardon, but we were just, erm—”

“I don't think the formalities are necessary, Ruth,” Sardâr said coldly, staring at the woman.

Jack felt it too. It was the same sensation he had when he saw a member of the Cult of Dionysus. There was something else there, a demonic presence his brain didn't want to recognize.

“Well observed, elf,” the woman replied. In an instant her dress was gone, replaced by a hooded black cloak. Gone too was the candelabra. Instead, her hand was twisted as if she gripped a chalice, a cloud of ice-blue energy hovering in the center.

“Archbishop Nimue, I presume?”

“Correct, sir. And I believe you are the now somewhat legendary Sardâr Râhnamâ, leader of the Apollonians, who so aggravated the fortunes of the late Iago?”

“Indeed.”

“I must say,” Nimue continued, her aristocratic manners apparently unchanged by the removal of her disguise, “it is a genuine pleasure to share conversation with other Enlightened folk.” She swaggered across the room to seat herself in one of the high armchairs, which had now transfigured into a throne of ice. “We had a maid who happened to overhear a little too much yesterday and, well, fate didn't smile upon
her—”

“What's this?” Sardâr asked coolly, ignoring the elitist jibes and holding up the blueprints.

Nimue laughed: a high soporific tinkling. “Enlightened but nonetheless ignorant. Do you really think it was pure coincidence that you all ended up employed by us or our associates? Iago's losing possession of his mirror only lowered him in our estimation. If he had not already suffered the worst punishment imaginable, it would have been multiplied a hundredfold. However, we know what you have seen of us. We made sure you were channeled into places where we could watch you until our work here was done. And here you are, and you are too late.”

“You still haven't answered my question,” Sardâr replied, his voice rising.

Nimue laughed again. “This isn't a novel. I'm not some tragically flawed supervillain who'll tell you all my plans on the off chance you won't survive. Suffice it to say, though, you shall not be around to see them come to fruition.”

She rose from her throne into the air like a banshee, lifted on alchemical winds which were now redirected upon the Apollonians. Jack stumbled against the growing gale drawing him into the center of the room, the cord of the Seventh Shard cutting into his neck as it was pulled towards Nimue's hand. On the other side of the desk, Bál struggled against the same alchemical force, the First Shard drawing closer to the Cultist's other hand.

Sardâr leapt onto the table and bellowed another alchemical command. Instantly, the wind ceased and the room was filled with alabaster light as glowing weapons flashed into each of their grasps: swords for Jack and Sardâr, an axe for Bál, and a spear for Ruth.

Nimue's gaze narrowed. “This grows tiresome. I am running on a tight schedule. We shall have to extract the more valuable artifacts from the wreckage upon our return.”